Abstract: An integral methods were proposed to determine the indicators of groundwater total use amount control for one area/ basin in the arid & semiarid inland river basins of northwest of China with the problem of lacking of relational methods. The main procedure includes: identifying the ecosystem protection & restoration to the limited conditions and then transforming them to quantitative criterions; determining the groundwater safe yield by numerous simulation; calculating the periodicity total amount control index according to supply and demand balance analysis. The methods were applied in the Hongyashan Irrigation District in the down stream of Shiyang River Basin of Gansu Province. The calculated groundwater use total amount control index are 10 833×104 m3 for planning period 2020 and 10 700×104 m3 for 2030. The results are loose compared with current indicators and show that the methods are rational and functional.