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Arid Land Geography ›› 2021, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (1): 89-98.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000–6060.2021.01.10

• Climatology and Hydrology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Evaluation of water ecological security in Hexi inland river basin

DAI Wenyuan1(),CHEN Nianlai1(),LI Jinxia1,ZHANG Rui2   

  1. 1. College of Resources and Environment, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, Gansu, China
    2. College of Water Conservancy and Hydropower Engineering, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, Gansu, China
  • Received:2020-01-19 Revised:2020-12-19 Online:2021-01-25 Published:2021-03-09
  • Contact: Nianlai CHEN E-mail:13993181879@163.com;chennl@gsau.edu.cn

Abstract:

The Hexi Corridor is located in the middle of China, in the depression between the Tibetan Plateau and the Inner Mongolia Plateau; the Siberian High is unimpeded here. The ecology of the Hexi Corridor directly affects the overall ecological situation of China. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to evaluate water security in the inland river basins of the Hexi Corridor. Most research on water security used the traditional pressure-state-response model and its extended model; the optimization and calibration of an evaluation index system have hardly been mentioned. This article introduces the society-economic-water ecological composite system model for water security evaluation. This water ecological security evaluation index system was constructed from natural and socio-economic attributes of water security, and the index system was optimized by fuzzy system analysis and improved niche theory. The optimized and calibrated index system was used for the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation of the water security of inland river basins in the Hexi Corridor from 2014 to 2017. The improved niche theory was used to calculate the niche width of the evaluation index. The improved niche width values of B3 (industrial added value), B13 (river base flow), B17 (water yield coefficient), and B20 (water diversion) were the largest, which have relatively little influence on the index system. They were eliminated in the optimized index system. Fuzzy system analysis was used to calculate the weight of the evaluation index. In the optimized index system, indexes C11 (perennial average precipitation), C16 (water storage), C17 (surface water supply), C18 (groundwater resource supply), C24 (ecological environment water consumption), and C29 (water-saving irrigation area) have the largest cumulative index weight, at 36.18%. The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation index of water security in the Heihe River Basin was above 0.45. The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation index of the Shiyang River Basin decreased from 0.5 in 2014 to <0.3 in 2017. The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation index of the Shule River Basin hovers around 0.2. The results showed that increasing investment in water conservation, developing water-saving irrigated agriculture, and protecting the ecological environment were the most effective measures to improve water security in inland river basins. From 2014 to 2017, the water security situation in the Heihe River Basin improved, whereas the water security in the Shiyang and Shule River Basins has deteriorated. These basins should be taken as key governance areas, so the trend of the overall improvement and partial deterioration of water security in inland river basins continues. The results provided theoretical and data support for water administration and environmental management departments in the Hexi Corridor to make ecological risk decisions and provided new ideas for the high-quality development of Gansu Province river basins.

Key words: niche improvement theory, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, water ecological security, Hexi inland river