Quantitative Evaluation of Sustainable Development and Eco-Environmental Carrying Capacity in Water-Deficient Regions:A Case Study in the Haihe River Basin,China

Quantitative assessment of development sustainability could be a challenge to regional management and planning, especially for areas facing great risks of water shortage. Surface-water decline and groundwater over-pumping have caused serious environmental problems and limited economic development in many regions all around the world. In this paper, a framework for quantitatively evaluating development sustainability was established with water-related eco-environmental carrying capacity （EECC） as the core measure. As a case study, the developed approach was applied to data of the Haihe River Basin, China, during 1998 through 2007. The overall sustainable development degree （SDD） is determined to be 0.39, suggesting that this rate of development is not sustainable. Results of scenario analysis revealed that overshoot, or resource over- exploitation, of the Basin＇s EECC is about 20% for both population and economy. Based on conditions in the study area in 2007, in order to achieve sustainable development, i.e., SDD〉0.70 in this study, the EECC could support a population of 108 million and gross domestic product （GDP） of 2.72 trillion CNY. The newly developed approach in quantifying ecoenvironmental carrying capacity is anticipated to facilitate sustainable development oriented resource management in waterdeficient areas.

Assessment of Land Comprehensive Carrying Capacity in Lin'an City

According to regional characteristics and the actual situation in Lin ’an City, an evaluation index system of land comprehensive carrying capacity composed of three support subsystems （eco-environment, social and economic carrying capaci-ties） containing 22 evaluation indexes was established to evaluate the comprehen-sive carrying capacity of land resource in Lin’an City during 2005-2012. Meanwhile, based on the target data of overal land use plan, the level of land comprehensive carrying capacity was predicted at the end of the plan period （2020） .The results showed that land comprehensive carrying capacity had a significant growth in Lin ’an from 2005 to 2012, and the development trend was basical y sustainable. The sub-systems also had been greatly improved, in which the constant improvement of ec-ological environment carrying capacity made the largest contribution to the constant raising of land comprehensive carrying capacity. The degree of coordination between the systems was poor, in which eco-environment carrying capacity had the maxi-mum growth, far more than the social and economic carrying capacities. According to the land comprehensive carrying capacity in 2020, utilization of land resources in Lin＆#39;an city can achieve sustainable development in general. Final y, proposals of im-proving comprehensive carrying capacity were put forward in terms of the enhance-ment of eco-environment protection, accelerating economic development and policy guidance.

System dynamics model of Suzhou water resources carrying capacity and its application

A model of Suzhou water resources carrying capacity （WRCC） was set up using the method of system dynamics （SD）. In the model, three different water resources utilization programs were adopted： （1） continuity of existing water utilization, （2） water conservation/saving, and （3） water exploitation. The dynamic variation of the Suzhou WRCC was simulated with the supply-decided principle for the time period of 2001 to 2030, and the results were characterized based on socio-economic factors. The corresponding Suzhou WRCC values for several target years were calculated by the model. Based on these results, proper ways to improve the Suzhou WRCC are proposed. The model also produced an optimized plan, which can provide a scientific basis for the sustainable utilization of Suzhou water resources and for the coordinated development of the society, economy, and water resources.