Exploration of the Dynamic Water Resource Carrying Capacity of the Keriya River Basin on the Southern Margin of the Taklimakan Desert, China
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Regional Sustainability Volume 2 Issue 1 Article 7 1-1-2021 Exploration of the dynamic water resource carrying capacity of the Keriya River Basin on the southern margin of the Taklimakan Desert, China Shuhong Yang State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Tao Yang State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://egijournals.researchcommons.org/regional-sustainability Part of the Natural Resources and Conservation Commons, Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons, and the Sustainability Commons Recommended Citation Yang, Shuhong and Yang, Tao (2021) "Exploration of the dynamic water resource carrying capacity of the Keriya River Basin on the southern margin of the Taklimakan Desert, China," Regional Sustainability: Vol. 2 : Iss. 1 , Article 7. DOI: 10.1016/j.regsus.2021.01.005 Available at: https://egijournals.researchcommons.org/regional-sustainability/vol2/iss1/7 This Full Length Article is brought to you for free and open access by Journals of EGI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Regional Sustainability by an authorized editor of Journals of EGI. Regional Sustainability 2 (2021) 73–82 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Regional Sustainability journal homepage: www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/regional-sustainability Full Length Article Exploration of the dynamic water resource carrying capacity of the Keriya River Basin on the southern margin of the Taklimakan Desert, China Shuhong Yang a,b, Tao Yang a,c,* a State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, 830011, China b University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China c State Key Laboratory of Hydrology Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: The water resource carrying capacity (WRCC) in river basin changes dynamically under climate Climate change change, economic development, and technological advancement. Climate change affects hydro- Economic development logical processes and spatial/temporal distribution of water resources; while economic develop- Technological advancement ment and technological advancement can also affect the balance of water resources systems. Under Water resource carrying capacity climate change, economic development, and technological advancement, it is of great significance Keriya River Basin to explore the dynamic behavior of WRCC in river basins. This will help to alleviate water re- sources security issues and build a sustainable water resources system. This study was carried out to evaluate the dynamic WRCC using the “climate, economics, and technology-control objective inversion model”, which used total water consumption, water-use efficiency, and restrained total pollutant control in the water functional area as boundary conditions. This study was conducted on the Keriya River Basin, a sub-catchment located in southern margin of the Taklimakan Desert. The WRCC in the Keriya River Basin in 2015 was calculated, and the trends in the short term (2020), middle term (2030), and long term (2050) were predicted. The results revealed that climate change factors have a positive effect on WRCC in the Keriya River Basin, which leads to an increase in total water resources. Economic and technological development exhibits an overall positive effect, while increasing in water consumption and sewage discharge exhibit a negative effect. 1. Introduction Water is essential for human survival and social development (Yang et al., 2019). Water resource carrying capacity (WRCC) has been changing dynamically due to climate change, economic development, and technological advancement (Jonathan, 1999; Song et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2014). The IPCC report indicated that the global average temperature increased as much as 0.74 C from 1906 to 2005, and the rate of temperature increment in the past 50 years was around twice that of 100 years ago (IPCC, 2007). The trend of temperature change in China over the past century is consistent with that of global temperature change. The statistics showed that the * Corresponding author. State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, 830011, China. E-mail address: [email protected] (T. Yang). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsus.2021.01.005 Received 9 June 2020; Received in revised form 13 December 2020; Accepted 29 January 2021 Available online 12 February 2021 2666-660X/© 2021 Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). S. Yang and T. Yang Regional Sustainability 2 (2021) 73–82 Table 1 Partitioning of water resource region in the Keriya River Basin. Sub-region Distribution Area ( Â 104 hm2) Description IV–1 Middle and upper reaches of the Keriya River Basin 83.82 Areas above the Nunumaimaitilangan Hydrological Station IV–2 Irrigation area in the lower reach of the Keriya River Basin 4.85 Areas below the Nunumaimaitilangan Hydrological Station IV–3 Oasis area in the lower reach of the Keriya River Basin 277.23 Areas downstream of the Keriya River Basin entering deserts IV–4 River areas in the east of the Keriya River Basin 17.71 Aqiang River, Pishge River, and Tamiya River Total 383.61 Fig. 1. Location of the study area and distribution of water resource sub-region in the Keriya River Basin. IV–1, middle and upper reaches of the Keriya River Basin; IV–2, irrigation area in the lower reach of the Keriya River Basin; IV–3, oasis area in the lower reach of the Keriya River Basin; and IV–4, river areas in the east of the Keriya River Basin. average surface temperature rose 1.38 C in China during 1951–2009, with an average of 0.23 C in every 10 years (Editing Commission of the Third National Report on Climate Change of China, 2011), which is consistent with the fifth IPCC report (IPCC, 2014). Tem- perature plays an important role in the water cycle (Nogueira, 2019), which affects spatial and temporal distribution of water resources (Men et al., 2019; Tukimat and Harun, 2019), resulting in the changing of WRCC. Moreover, with the development of economy and technology, especially the increment in water consumption and sewage discharge, the changes in water balance and the dynamic WRCC become more intensive (Wang et al., 2017). Therefore, it is of practical significance to study the dynamic behavior of WRCC under the changing climate, economic, and technological development. There have been a number of researches to study the methods for calculating WRCC. Among these, the empirical formula is the most straightforward method, and the operation is easy (Hariyanto, 2017; Li and Liu, 2019). A disadvantage of this approach is the lack of interaction among economy factors, society factors, and environment factors. Moreover, there is a lack of quantitative evaluation of specific technical support factor, such as regulation schemes of river basin. Therefore, the empirical method is insufficient to evaluate WRCC under dynamic change conditions. The second method is a comprehensive evaluation approach, which builds a catastrophe progression method and correlation analysis for WRCC assessment (Song et al., 2018; Wu and Hu, 2020). A disadvantage of this technique is that systematic aspects are not fully considered during the calculation, and corresponding indicators and standards are difficult to select; therefore, the results are prone to be subjective and sensitive to expert experience. The third method comprehensively considers economy factors, society factors, and ecology factors to evaluate the complexity of water resources system (Wang et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2019). The disadvantage of the system analysis method is that the calculation is not straightforward and complex. Therefore, the system analysis method is not easy to apply into real application; moreover, the model is not unique (Zuo, 2017; Yi et al., 2018). Water resource is the most important natural resources in the Keriya River Basin, which is located in the Taklimakan Desert, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China. According to Hotan District Water Resources Bulletin (Ministry of Water Resource of Xinjiang, 2016), the total water consumption of the Keriya River Basin was 5.9139 Â 108 m3 in 2015, and the planned water consumption in the 74 S. Yang and T. Yang Regional Sustainability 2 (2021) 73–82 near term (2020), middle term (2030), and long term (2050) planning is 6.0280 Â 108, 6.3055 Â 108, and 6.8605 Â 108 m3, respectively. To achieve sustainable utilization of water resources, it is of practical importance to evaluate the dynamic WRCC in the Keriya River Basin under the changes of climate, economy, and technology (Cheng et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019; Wei et al., 2019; Peng and Deng, 2020). Therefore, this study adopted the “climate, economics, and technology-control objective inversion model” (CET-COIM model) to evaluate the dynamic WRCC in the Keriya River Basin under the impacts of climate change and human activities, which provides a useful tool for supporting regional water security and social economy development (Kang et al., 2019). 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Study area Taklimakan Desert is located in arid region of China, which has a large diurnal temperature variation. The area of Taklimakan Desert has extended about 100 km to the south in the past 1000 years, which affects the regional economic and social development (Yu et al., 2015, 2017). The Keriya River Basin is located between 35140–39290N and 81090–82510E with the Kunlun Mountains to the south and the Tarim Basin to the north, covering an area of 3.84 Â 106 hm2.