Highlights What are the main findings? Revegetation projects in water-limited regions could intensify water consumption through evapotranspiration. The variation trends of surface areas and their driving factors differ between lakes of different sizes. What are the implications of the main findings? Future revegetation projects should adopt a hydrologically informed and spatially differentiated method that balances the potential negative effects of vegetation on water resources. Water-efficient vegetation species could be prioritized for ecological restoration in semi-arid regions and incorporated into continuous monitoring for water balance.Highlights What are the main findings? Revegetation projects in water-limited regions could intensify water consumption through evapotranspiration. The variation trends of surface areas and their driving factors differ between lakes of different sizes. What are the implications of the main findings? Future revegetation projects should adopt a hydrologically informed and spatially differentiated method that balances the potential negative effects of vegetation on water resources. Water-efficient vegetation species could be prioritized for ecological restoration in semi-arid regions and incorporated into continuous monitoring for water balance.Highlights What are the main findings? Revegetation projects in water-limited regions could intensify water consumption through evapotranspiration. The variation trends of surface areas and their driving factors differ between lakes of different sizes. What are the implications of the main findings? Future revegetation projects should adopt a hydrologically informed and spatially differentiated method that balances the potential negative effects of vegetation on water resources. Water-efficient vegetation species could be prioritized for ecological restoration in semi-arid regions and incorporated into continuous monitoring for water balance.Highlights What are the main findings? Revegetation projects in water-limited regions could intensify water consumption through evapotranspiration. The variation trends of surface areas and their driving factors differ between lakes of different sizes. What are the implications of the main findings? Future revegetation projects should adopt a hydrologically informed and spatially differentiated method that balances the potential negative effects of vegetation on water resources. Water-efficient vegetation species could be prioritized for ecological restoration in semi-arid regions and incorporated into continuous monitoring for water balance.Abstract Revegetation serves as a critical ecological safeguard, while these interventions have added complexity to the evapotranspiration processes and water balance. Dalinor Lake basin (DLB), located in the southeast of Inner Mongolia Plateau, serves as a vital habitat for migratory birds and plays an important role in the ecological security of northern China. To enhance biodiversity, numerous ecological restoration projects have been carried out in this area in recent years. Dalinor Lake, a large inland lake within the basin, has experienced persistent shrinkage. Although existing studies have explored its driving factors, the potential influence of revegetation activities on lake shrinkage remains unclear. In this study, we used remote sensing imagery, combined with supervised classification and visual interpretation methods, to extract changes in the surface areas of lakes within the DLB (i.e. , Dalinor Lake and Ganggeng Lake), and analyzed the effects of total terrestrial evapotranspiration (ETt), precipitation (PPT), runoff, soil moisture content, and the vapor pressure deficit on these changes. Results showed that the Dalinor Lake's area decreased by 18.68% from 2000 to 2020, and was mainly influenced by ETt, with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) contributing the most to ETt (54.02%). In contrast, Ganggeng Lake expanded by 5.68% and was strongly driven by PPT. Compared with Ganggeng Lake, there have been more revegetation activities around Dalinor Lake, resulting in significant increases in NDVI and ETt, together with widespread declines in soil moisture in its surrounding areas, suggesting that revegetation exerted non-negligible water pressure on Dalinor Lake. These findings can provide valuable information for policymakers to balance large-scale ecological restoration with sustainable water management in semi-arid regions.