Systematic Evaluation and Influencing Factors Analysis of Water Environmental Carrying Capacity in Taihu Basin, China

Systematic evaluation of water environment carrying capacity (WECC) is a prerequisite for achieving sustainable development, which reflects the water environment comprehensive condition of lake basin under the current economic development scenario. Therefore, taking the Taihu Basin as a case study,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Water (Basel) 2023-03, Vol.15 (6), p.1213
Main Authors: Hu, Zhibing, Pang, Yong, Xu, Ruichen, Yu, Hui, Niu, Yuan, Wu, Changgan, Liu, Yuan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air pollution
algae
Algal blooms
Analysis
Aquatic resources
Basins
Carrying capacity
Carrying capacity (Ecology)
Case studies
China
Ecology
Economic development
Emission analysis
Environmental management
Eutrophication
Evaluation
Lake basins
Land use
Methods
Pollution
Pollution index
River networks
Sustainable development
water
Water analysis
Water discharge
Water pollution
Water quality
Water resources
Watershed management
Watersheds
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Summary:Systematic evaluation of water environment carrying capacity (WECC) is a prerequisite for achieving sustainable development, which reflects the water environment comprehensive condition of lake basin under the current economic development scenario. Therefore, taking the Taihu Basin as a case study, a scientific comprehensive evaluation index system of WECC was established based on the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) assessment framework, which included water resources (WR), pollution emission (PE), water quality (WQ), water ecology (WE), and land use (LU) sub-systems. An expert group was invited to determine the weights of each indicator using the group analytic hierarchy process (G-AHP) method, and the indicators in the WR, PE, WQ, WE, and LU sub-systems were 6.5%, 21.8%, 27.9%, 11.1%, and 32.9%, respectively. According to the evaluation results, the WECC index of Taihu Basin increased by 51.4% from 2007 to 2019, but it still slightly exceeded the carrying capacity of the water environment; the water quality and pollution discharge indices had the most significant improvement. Algal blooms are a major factor challenging WECC in the Taihu Basin. Therefore, the overall restoration of the water eco-system must receive more attention in the future.
ISSN:2073-4441
2073-4441
DOI:10.3390/w15061213