Abstract:

As the only large-scale water transfer project within Ningxia Province, China, the water transfer project in central and southern Ningxia involves transferring water from the Jing River Basin, which has relatively rich surface water, on Liupan Mountain, to the Qingshui River Basin, which has poor surface water. With a water supply pattern that depends on the pumping water of the Yellow River and piloting water from the Jing River and regional water resources in receiving areas, studies should determine how all types of water supply resources can be fully and reasonably used. The local government and water administration department should ensure that water resource management can provide not only remarkable social and economic benefits but also environmental benefits. However, for water-receiving areas in the water transfer project, the original water supply structure changes, and the water resource system becomes reorganized. Therefore, the scheme should be comprehensively evaluated at a high level based on water resource allocation schemes to analyze the effect of the water transfer project on receiving areas and demonstrate the effect of water resource allocation schemes. All schemes are comprehensively optimized based on economy, society, and ecological environment, and optimization results are considered as the decision basis. Project implementation considerably affects the water resource allocation patterns in water-receiving areas. In this study, given the characteristics of the multi-objective and fuzzy incompatibility of water resource allocation, the research target was the effect of the water transfer project on water resource allocation in a given receiving area. From the perspectives of life and ecology priorities, a water resource allocation plan was selected with or without the participation of the water transfer project at planning levels in 2020 and 2025. Evaluation indicators were selected based on three aspects: social, economic, and ecological. Then, an index evaluation system was established. Principal component analysis and fuzzy matter-element comprehensive evaluation were performed to calculate. The final scores of the two methods were ranked according to their strengths and weaknesses, which were then compared and analyzed. Both evaluation results indicate that the best water resource allocation scheme is the one with the participation of the water transfer project based on ecological priority. Fuzzy matter-element evaluation results reveal that all schemes using the water transfer project are better than those without the water transfer project in the central and southern regions. The higher the water resource allocation in water-receiving areas, the better is the plan. In summary, the two evaluation results showed that the water transfer project in central and southern Ningxia has promoted the socioeconomic development of the water-receiving area and provided ecological and environmental benefits.

Key words: central and southern Ningxia water transfer project, water resources allocation, evaluation of water resources allocation, principal component analysis, fuzzy matter-element comprehensive evaluation