Measurement and assessment of water resources carrying capacity in Henan Province, China

Abstract

As demands on limited water resources intensify, concerns are being raised about water resources carrying capacity (WRCC), which is defined as the maximum sustainable socioeconomic scale that can be supported by available water resources and while maintaining defined environmental conditions. This paper proposes a distributed quantitative model for WRCC, based on the principles of optimization, and considering hydro-economic interaction, water supply, water quality, and socioeconomic development constraints. With the model, the WRCCs of 60 subregions in Henan Province were determined for different development periods. The results showed that the water resources carrying level of Henan Province was suitably loaded in 2010, but that the province would be mildly overloaded in 2030 with respect to the socioeconomic development planning goals. The restricting factors for WRCC included the available water resources, the increasing rate of GDP, the urbanization ratio, the irrigation water utilization coefficient, the industrial water recycling rate, and the wastewater reuse rate, of which the available water resources was the most crucial factor. Because these factors varied temporally and spatially, the trends in predicted WRCC were inconsistent across different subregions and periods.

Focus on economy or ecology? A three‐dimensional trade‐off based on ecological carrying capacity in southwest China

“…The concept of carrying capacity was coined in the 1880s, and was concerned with farm management and rooted in demography and biology (Boswell, ; Dou, Ma, Li, & Zuo, ). In ecology, carrying capacity means the maximum population of a species that can be supported by a habitat without permanent impairment of the capacity (Prato, ).…”

“…In ecology, carrying capacity means the maximum population of a species that can be supported by a habitat without permanent impairment of the capacity (Prato, ). Later, carrying capacity gradually evolved to be applied to many fields, including resources (Boswell, ; Dou et al, ), environment (R. Z. Liu & Borthwick, ; Rees, ), society (Daily & Ehrlich, ; Mauerhofer, ), culture (Bail, ; Durham, ), and tourism (Lobo, Trajano, Marinho, & Bichuette, ; Saveriades, ). It is also widely used in research into the contradiction between the natural environment and the development of humankind.…”

Assessment of water resources carrying capacity for the Island of Cres

“…The first group of assessments is based on complex deterministic models, such as the system dynamics (e.g. [1,2]), while the second one is based on probabilistic approach (e.g. [3]).…”

Assessment of water resources carrying capacity using uncertainty and sensitivity analyses

“…Većina dostupnih metoda procjene NKVR mogu se ugrubo smjestiti u dvije grupe. Prva grupa procjena bazirana je na kompleksnim determinističkim modelima, poput dinamike sustava [1], a druga na probabilističkom pristupu [2]. U ovom radu primijenjene suprobabilističke metode.…”