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The Wuwei oasis, situated in the upper reaches of the Shiyang River basin in the arid inland of northwest China, is intensively cultivated using both groundwater and irrigation water originating from the Qilian Mountains. Groundwater levels are declining due to overuse of irrigation water. To estimate the decline over the entire Wuwei oasis, eight different interpolation methods were used for interpolating groundwater levels over 3 years, i.e. starting in 1983, followed by 1988 and ending with 1992. Cross-validation and orthogonal-validation were applied to evaluate the accuracy of the different methods. Root mean squared error and the correlation coefficient (R (2)) were calculated for each of the interpolation methods and years. Three kriging methods (simply, ordinary, and universal) gave the best fit. Modified ordinary kriging was found better than simple and universal kriging methods with a smaller number of points having large differences (> 50 m) between estimated and predicted values. Based on the groundwater surfaces determined by the ordinary kriging as modified by Yamamoto, the groundwater decline was found from 1983 to 1992 to be a modest 2.1 m in average.