State Key Laboratory of Environment Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China.
College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2020 Jun;27(17):21590-21603. doi: 10.1007/s11356-020-08259-5. Epub 2020 Apr 11.
China is facing great challenges to balance its natural water resource use and eco-environment protection, especially in the north semi-arid region with large water consumption due to the rapid economic growth. This highlights the urgency to use water resource carrying capacity (WRCC) as a measure to maintain the sustainable development of the human and natural water system. Here, we used a coupled model based on the system dynamics and cellular automaton models to assess the WRCC under the critical value of water resource withdrawal ratio (40%) and its sustainability in the Yongding River watershed in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, where the water use highly depends on river flow and nonrenewable groundwater resources. The analytical results showed that the current regional WRCC is severely overloaded due to strong human activities. The predicted results based on four scenarios, i.e., existing development, water saving, industrial restructuring, and integrated development schemes, showed that although the improvement of water saving and water use efficiency has mitigated the regional water shortage, evidenced by the increased WRCC, the water shortage would continue due to the increased water demand. Under the integrated development scenario, it will need at least additional 7.1 × 10 m water per year (Beijing: 2.5 × 10 m, Tianjin: 0.8 × 10 m, Hebei: 3.8 × 10 m) via the water transfer project to maintain the sustainability in the next decades. Our research provides recommendations for reasonable water utilization and supplementation under the severe water crisis.
中国在平衡自然资源利用和生态环境保护方面面临着巨大的挑战，尤其是在北方半干旱地区，由于经济的快速增长，导致水资源消耗巨大。这凸显了利用水资源承载力（WRCC）作为维护人类和自然水资源系统可持续发展的措施的紧迫性。在这里，我们使用了一种基于系统动力学和元胞自动机模型的耦合模型，来评估北京-天津-河北地区永定河流域在水资源抽取率（40%）临界值下的 WRCC 及其可持续性，该地区的用水高度依赖于河流流量和不可再生的地下水资源。分析结果表明，由于人类活动的强烈影响，当前区域 WRCC 已经严重超载。基于四种情景的预测结果，即现有发展、节水、产业结构调整和综合发展方案，表明尽管节水和用水效率的提高缓解了区域水资源短缺，表现为 WRCC 的增加，但由于需水量的增加，水资源短缺仍将持续。在综合发展情景下，未来几十年，通过南水北调工程，每年至少需要额外增加 7.1×10^8m 的水（北京：2.5×10^8m，天津：0.8×10^8m，河北：3.8×10^8m），才能维持可持续性。我们的研究为在严重的水资源危机下合理利用和补充水资源提供了建议。
