Constraint regionalization of water environment and the guidance for industrial layout: A case study of Jiangsu Province

Abstract

Along with the highly speedy development of economy and society in the developed area in China, with the sharp increase in the quantity of pollutant discharge such as agricultural fertilizers, industrial wastewater and domestic sewage, the water environment has been deteriorated continuously and then become a restricting factor to regional development. For harmonizing the relationship between economic development and water environment, many countries have been attempting water environmental function zoning so as to provide a scientific basis for the basin management. However, focusing mainly on water body, these researches ignored the spatial relation between water and land as well as the restricted function of water environment on regional industrial layout. So previous index system adapted only to the environmental genes but excluded the stress genes of socio-economic development. This paper, thus, taking both the sensitivity and pressure of water environment into consideration, discusses the methods of constraint regionalization of water environment, including how to divide the assessed units, choose and manage the assessed elements. Then, as a case study, Jiangsu Province is divided into four types of areas by the method of quadrant analysis, i.e., high-pressure and high-sensitivity area (HP-HS Area), high-pressure and low-sensitivity area (HP-LS Area), low-pressure and high-sensitivity area (LP-HS Area) and low-pressure and low-sensitivity area (LP-LS Area). Finally, this paper presents the schemes of industrial layout and the policy of industrial development direction respectively, which are very important bases for harmonizing the industrial development and the bearing capacity of water environment.