Stopping or even reversing the trend requires management interventions. The North China Plain serves as an example, illustrating the options for management and the experience with measures taken between 2014 and 2020. A management system is set up for a typical county in the North China Plain. It contains three components: monitoring, decision support based on modelling, and implementation in the field. All methods are described in detail, such as monitoring of groundwater levels, monitoring of pumping rates of wells via their electricity consumption and monitoring of land use by remote sensing. The decision support module contains an irrigation calculator based on the FAO method, which allows to determine the total irrigation water need of the county according to its crop selection. It also contains a box model and a distributed groundwater model to project the outcome of different water allocation scenarios. All methods are coupled within the decision support system which allows to try out alternative cropping in order to reach set goals for groundwater levels. The year to year management is guided by the two red lines principle. The options for the stakeholders, the farmers, are analysed. They include water-saving technology in irrigation, fallowing of winter wheat and transfers of surface water from the south. The experience in the implementation of these measures in the field is reported. A groundwater game played during a survey with the farmers showed farmers’ preferences. While all problems could be solved by fallowing of winter wheat, the national grain security policy does not allow such a big loss in wheat production. Therefore, water transfers from the South are inevitable, and the solution consists of a combination of adapting the cropping system, enhancing water saving in irrigation and importing surface water from the south. With all the measures in place, sustainable pumping should be achievable within 5 years.   The open access book does not only describe the problem and the path to its solution. It also gives the reader access to nine manuals concerning methods used, including computer programs for trying out management options oneself. The computer game, Save the Water, is also included. The Chinese experience should be of considerable interest to other regions in the world which suffer from over-pumping of their aquifers. weiterlesen