Abstract
The economic development, population growth and rapid urbanization in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) have resulted in an imbalance between socio-economic development and available water resources of adjacent urban agglomerations. Exploring the virtual water flow (VWF) of adjacent urban agglomerations in YREB is crucial for the collaborative management of water resources. In this study, a factorial-based dynamic distributive model (FDDM) is first developed to analyze the variations in virtual water transfers and inter/inner-sectoral relationships within multi-urban agglomerations, and expound the spatiotemporal diffusion effects of multiple water policy alternatives (and their combinations) for virtual water. The FDDM is applied in YREB's urban agglomerations covering Yangtze River Delta (YRDA), Middle Reach of Yangtze River (MRA) and Chengyu Urban Agglomeration (CYA). The FDDM is capable of i) quantifying the dynamic evolution of direct/indirect virtual water volume and virtual water transfer direction/path between and within urban agglomerations; ii) demonstrating the spatiotemporal changes of the control/dependent relationship within sectors in sub-urban agglomerations, as well as the evolution of utility relationship within the system; iii) evaluating the interactions of different water policies (and their combinations) within each sub-urban agglomeration/key sectors on the direct and indirect virtual water consumption of the system. Our major findings are: (i) YRDA always has the largest direct and indirect water consumption as well as the water consumption intensities from 2007 to 2017; (ii) The three national urban agglomerations have evolved in the direction of benign development; (iii) the interactions between YRDA and MRA, YRDA_FLF (sector of farming, forest, livestock, and fishery in YRDA) and MRA_FTO (sector of food and tobacco processing in MRA) on VWF are obvious. These results will provide a new insight for balancing urban agglomeration development and water resource utilization in YREB.
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