Presenter
Dr. Geng Niu, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research
Co-author(s)
Prof. Yi Zheng, Southern University of Science and Technology
The rapid development of the population and economy has exerted enormous pressure on water resources and the ecological environment in global inland arid areas. The contradiction between social economy and water resources, and ecological environment has been constantly intensifying in inland arid areas. Solving these contradictions requires studying the feedback mechanism between human activities and ecological hydrological processes at the watershed level, and developing advanced mathematical models to support regional development planning, policy-making, and engineering measures design. The two main driving factors causing temporal and spatial changes in water resources are climate change and human intervention. Inland river basins in arid and semi-arid areas are very sensitive to climate change and human activities due to their limited water resources and fragile ecological environment. Natural environmental evolution and socio-economic development profoundly affect the water cycle evolution in inland arid areas, and climate change also significantly affects the ecological hydrological processes in the watershed. Taking the watershed as the main axis of the natural-social coupled system, strengthening the Water-Ecology-Economy (WES) coupled system response mechanism to changing environments in inland river basins is an important basis for ensuring future water security, sustainable economic and social development, supporting national food security and ecological security. The CGE model, based on general equilibrium theory, has the advantage of characterizing the macroscopic behavior of the socio-economic system and is a useful tool for quantitative analysis of water price, water rights, water resources allocation, and water market. It is also an effective means of predicting water resource demand under changes in the socio-economic system. This study develops a bi-directional coupling of distributed ecological hydrological models and socio-economic models based on the CGE model, using CMIP6 downscaling data as the data driver for future socio-economic and climate change. In the simulation framework of disturbance-evolution, under multi-model ensemble scenarios, the study simulates and predicts the response trend characteristics of future socio-economy, water resources, and ecological environment in the watershed quantitatively explores the co-variation relationship and evolution law of the complex system correlation (WES Nexus) in the inland river basin under changing environments. The results provide scientific insights for the rational use of water resources and ecological environment protection in the inland river basin, and have important reference value for the sustainable development of China's northwest region and many inland countries along the “Belt and Road”.