The China and Japan cooperative research program `HEIFE' on the land-atmosphere interaction process in arid and semi-arid area was carried out during 1989-1993 in Heihe river basin in Gansu province, China. The observation area is located between Qilian mountains and Longshou mountains, in north of the Tibetan plateau. It is under arid and semi-arid climate and its land surface is covered with sand desert, gobi and oasis. The Heihe river flows from south Qilian mountains into north desert. The amount of annual precipitation is from 100mm to 200mm.
The five observation stations, five automatic weather stations, and so on were made to measure meteorological and hydrological properties as well as the data collection. So many papers were published, such as those in special editions on HEIFE in the journal of the meteorological society of Japan at October and December in 1995. Several results relating to the water cycle in arid and semi-arid area are introduced here with a few new figures.
The water cycle can be divided into several parts: water vapor movement, precipitation, river flow, ground water, irrigation, evaporation/evapotraspiration, and water vapor advection. We need to measure and analyze all individual parts to understand water cycle and also we need to analyze the relationships between all parts. Sometimes the measured data are analyzed only for the interest of their observers. To avoid such poor status, we must keep human resource enough to analyze data and also make the data sets open to all scientists long after the observation.
HEIFE is also under rather poor status. Its data are not yet open to all users in convenient way, because its data service system is not yet established due to the lack of human resources.