A dataset of water use efficiency in the ecosystems of Central Asian arid regions during 1980–2020

Water use efficiency can reveal the coupling relation between water dissipation and carbon sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems. The understanding the temporal and spatial dynamics of water use efficiency and its response to complex climate change is a prerequisite for dealing with future climate change and man-made disturbances. The ecological model method is considered to be an effective way to assess the carbon and water dynamics of the regional large-scale ecosystem. This study is based on the Arid Region Ecosystem Model (AEM), using site flux data to optimize, verify, and parameterize the model, so as to build a dataset of water use efficiency of the arid region ecosystems in Central Asia. The time span of this dataset is 1980-2020, involving six types of ecosystems, namely coniferous forests, broad-leaved forests, grasslands, phreatophyte shrubs, non-phreatophyte shrubs and farmland. The study region covers five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan) and Xinjiang of China. Comparing the simulated results with the observed data, we found that they were highly consistent with each other. This dataset provides support for understanding the carbon-water dynamics of ecologically fragile areas under the background of global change and maintaining the stability of the ecosystem.