JIA Yangwen, ZHAO Zhenwu, WANG Fang, et al

Background

Ecological environment flow guarantees the health of the river. Yet, the enormous social and economic water consumption rises various ecological and environmental problems. Therefore, it is of great scientific value and it is an urgent need to comprehensively analyze the complicated mutual-feeding relationship between the economy, society, ecological environment and water circulation and based on that to establish a scientific and feasible approach to make overall analysis of environment flow and bring about a holistic adjustment plan.

Content

(1) Analysis of the dynamic mutual feedback mechanism among water, ecology and economy and construction of coupling model;

(2) Identification of river’s natural environmental background and causation of multi-source disturbances;

(3) Ecological hydrological zoning based on the comprehensive characteristics of water, soil and biology on rivers;

(4) Overall analysis of river multi-level ecological environment flow;

(5) Integrated, nested, optimized water resource dispatching in basins and water-ecological-economic comprehensive regulation of water resources in river basins.

Application

The proposed technical method and the three-level indicator of ecological environment flow and the comprehensive control plan for the 24 sections of the mainstream of the Weihe River and the 30 sections of the 18 key tributaries have been approved by the water local and provincial resources administrations of Shanxi, Weihe river basin as well as Huanghe River basin.

Major Technological Innovation and Contribution

The project connects to the 8th phase of the International Hydrological Decade Science Program (IHD) and the International Hydrological Program (IHP) on social hydrology, ecological hydrology regulation, etc., achieving massive information integration, multi-process and multi-scale coupling simulation of the water cycle, ecology and economy. It also answers to stakeholders’ appeal and solves a series of problems including the layering of use of water resources.

Results and Technological Output

Through six years of joint research, we have formed systematic results ranging from mechanism, method, technology to application. We published 5 monographs, 82 papers (25 in SCI), authorized 7 and applied for 3 invention patents and authorized 3 patents for utility models and 6 computer software copyrights.

Economic Effect

The ecological environment along the Weihe River has improved, and the area of ecological wetland and water landscape exceeded 150,000 mu, attracting more than 800,000 tourists every year. The accumulated economic value exceeded 1.6 billion yuan.

Social Effect

The research supported the realization of the 60-billion-yuan investment project-comprehensive improvement of the environment of Weihe River basin and achieved enormous social benefits.

Environmental Effect

More than 600 million yuan has been saved in terms of pollution control and the water quality of the Weihe River has been gradually improved from severely polluted to mildly polluted since the implementation of the ecological regulation and comprehensive control program for the Weihe river basin in 2011.

Weihe River Water Resource System