Abstract: With social and economic development, three types of water use(industrial water use, agricultural water use and domestic water use)increased significantly year by year, which aggravated seriously the impact on runoff. Therefore, research on the response of river runoff to economic water use is of great scientific significance for sustainable utilization and management of regional water resources. Due to restricted environmental conditions, few studies have been done on the impact of economic water use on runoff in the Weihe River Basin. In this paper, the change trends of economic water consumption and runoff in Guanzhong in Weihe River Basin were first analyzed by using inter-annual variation coefficient, cumulative anomaly and Mann-Kendall trend test. Then, the correlation analysis and regression analysis were adopted to estimate the response of runoff to economic water consumption in the basin and analyze individually the influence of different types of water use on runoff. Results show as follows: (1)On the whole, economic water consumption in the Weihe River Basin presented an increasing trend from 1997 to 2013 with a moderate growth rate. Agricultural water use accounted for a large proportion of total water use, which was even more than 60% per year.(2)The annual runoff decreased significantly in the Weihe River during 1960-2013, with a decrease rate of -0.8m³·s^-1.(3)The runoff had a strong response to economic water use in Guanzhong in Weihe River Basin. The industrial water use and domestic water use had smaller correlations with the runoff because above 90% of industrial and domestic water use came from groundwater. However, the influence of agricultural water on runoff was very significant, showing that the runoff decreased with the agricultural water use increasing. By quantitatively evaluating the individual impact of agricultural water, industrial water and domestic water consumption on river runoff, this paper provided a sound explanation for the response of runoff to economic water use, which plays an important guiding role for the future protection of water resources in this basin. In order to release the pressure on water resources and promote the healthy development of ecosystem, it would be very effective to strengthen the capacity of water management, enhance the intensity of water-saving agriculture and improve the water use efficiency.

Key words: runoff, economic water consumption, response, theWeihe River