Department of Earth and Environmental Science, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Soil and Groundwater Pollution Control, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China; State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Integrated Surface Water-Groundwater Pollution Control, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2019 Mar 25;658:550-557. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.12.185. Epub 2018 Dec 14.
Groundwater supplies fresh water for drinking and irrigation and sustains the health of ecosystems. Although the serious consequences caused by unsustainable depletion of groundwater have been widely reported, restricting pumping in exhausted aquifers requires identifying alternative water sources, determining how much water can be made accessible to avert the groundwater crisis and formulating water allocation regulations to achieve regional water sustainability. It is perceived that groundwater management needs integrated action considering environmental and socioeconomic systems; however, how a coupled socio-environmental system can be captured and quantified, and how this scientific evaluation is elicited and structured in policy making and implementation processes are still unclear. Here, we propose an integrated quantification framework and a revised policy-making procedure after examining the detailed planning for the groundwater pumping control policy as part of China's South-to-North Water Transfer Project and identifying the shortcomings of the policy. This quantification framework represents the iterative feedback loops between environmental and socioeconomic systems and provides both high-resolution and aggregated indications, that serve as instruments to evaluate the change in the water resource system and the rationality of water allocation plans through projections. Furthermore, our study demonstrates that integrated management needs the participation of scientists and the public, particularly in the discussion of formulating policy drafts among central and local stakeholders, which is helpful for sound decision making and coordination among science, policy making and practice.
地下水为饮用水和灌溉提供淡水，并维持着生态系统的健康。尽管地下水的不可持续开采所造成的严重后果已被广泛报道，但要限制衰竭含水层的开采，就需要确定替代水源，确定可以获得多少水来避免地下水危机，并制定水资源分配法规以实现区域水资源可持续性。人们认为地下水管理需要考虑环境和社会经济系统的综合行动；然而，如何捕捉和量化耦合的社会-环境系统，以及如何在决策和实施过程中引出和构建这一科学评估，仍然不清楚。在这里，我们在审查了南水北调工程地下水开采控制政策的详细规划并发现该政策的缺陷后，提出了一个综合量化框架和修订后的决策程序。这个量化框架代表了环境和社会经济系统之间的迭代反馈循环，并提供了高分辨率和聚合的指示，作为通过预测评估水资源系统变化和水资源分配计划合理性的工具。此外，我们的研究表明，综合管理需要科学家和公众的参与，特别是在中央和地方利益相关者之间讨论制定政策草案时，这有助于科学、政策制定和实践之间的合理决策和协调。
