Quantifying the underground water exchange between adjacent regions is a common question in field investigations and groundwater flow models. This paper proposes an innovative approach to assess underground water exchange patterns based on Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) observations, the water balance method, and Darcy's law. The dynamic patterns of flux changes are investigated over four boundaries of an arid plain. Moreover, the causes of anthropogenic and climate factors are evaluated using the entropy method and the partial least squares regression (PLSR) model. The results indicate that terrestrial water storage (TWS) in the study area shows a decreasing trend at a rate of −1.77 ± 0.21 mm/yr from 2003 to 2015. The water resources recharging the study area from its southern boundary show a noticeable increasing trend, which is mainly attributed to the warming climate and increasing precipitation on the Qilian Mountains. The Ecological Water Diversion Project and the imbalance between precipitation and evapotranspiration are the main factors inducing the decline of flux changes for the northern, western, and eastern boundaries. Under the constrains of empirical values of hydrogeological parameters, GRACE‐based methods find that increment of the flux changes in the southern boundary may account for approximately 0.43% of the investigated flux in 2000, and the decrement of flux changes in the eastern boundary may be about 0.01% to the previous measured results. Anthropogenic activities are the dominant driving force for the changes in water resources, with the weight of 88.70%. The presented method can provide insights into the patterns of flux change in data‐poor areas.