Integrated water risk early warning framework of the semi-arid transitional zone based on the water environmental carrying capacity (WECC) |
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| Authors: | XIE Yuxi |
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| Institution: | 1.School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;2.Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qinghai 810008, China;3.Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Nanjing 210042, China |
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| Abstract: | Water risk early warning systems based on the water environmental carrying capacity (WECC) are powerful and effective tools to guarantee the sustainability of rivers. Existing work on the early warning of WECC has mainly concerned the comprehensive evaluation of the status quo and lacked a quantitative prejudgement and warning of future overload. In addition, existing quantitative methods for short-term early warning have rarely focused on the integrated change trends of the early warning indicators. Given the periodicity of the socioeconomic system, however, the water environmental system also follows a trend of cyclical fluctuations. Thus, it is meaningful to monitor and use this periodicity for the early warning of the WECC. In this study, we first adopted and improved the prosperity index method to develop an integrated water risk early warning framework. We also constructed a forecast model to qualitatively and quantitatively prejudge and warn about the development trends of the water environmental system. We selected the North Canal Basin (an essential connection among the Beijing- Tianjin-Hebei region) in China as a case study and predicted the WECC in 25 water environmental management units of the basin in 2018-2023. We found that the analysis of the prosperity index was helpful in predicting the WECC, to some extent. The result demonstrated that the early warning system provided reliable prediction (root mean square error of 0.0651 and mean absolute error of 0.1418), and the calculation results of the comprehensive early warning index (CEWI) conformed to the actual situation and related research in the river basin. From 2008 to 2023, the WECC of most water environmental management units in the basin had improved but with some spatial differences: the CEWI was generally poor in areas with many human disturbances, while it was relatively good in the upstream regions with higher forest and grass covers as well as in the downstream areas with larger water volume. Finally, through a sensitivity analysis of the indicators, we proposed specific management measures for the sustainability of the water environmental system in the North Canal Basin. Overall, the integrated water risk early warning framework could provide an appropriate method for the water environmental administration department to predict the WECC of the basin in the future. This framework could also assist in implementing corresponding management measures in advance, especially for the performance evaluation and the arrangement of key short-term tasks in the River Chief System in China. |
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| Keywords: | water risk early warning system water environmental carrying capacity prosperity index water management North Canal (Beiyun River) |
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