Abstract
Water resources carrying capacity (WRCC) is a recently proposed management concept, which aims to support sustainable socio-economic development in a region or basin. However, the calculation of future WRCC is not well considered in most studies, because water resources and the socio-economic development mode for one area or city in the future are quite uncertain. This paper focused on the limits of traditional methods of WRCC and proposed a new concept, water resources design carrying capacity (WRDCC), which incorporated the concept of design. In WRDCC, the population size that the local water resources can support is calculated based on the balance of water supply and water consumption, under the design water supply and design socio-economic development mode. The WRDCC of Chengdu city in China is calculated. Results show that the WRDCC (population size) of Chengdu city in development modeI (II, III) will be 997 ×104 (770 × 104, 504 × 104) in 2020, and 934 × 104 (759 × 104, 462 × 104) in 2030. Comparing the actual population to the carrying population (WRDCC) in 2020 and 2030, a bigger gap will appear, which means there will be more and more pressure on the society-economic sustainable development.
Highlights
The concept of carrying capacity can be traced back to the 1970’s, which is defined as the number of individuals who can be supported in a given area within natural resource limits, without degrading the natural social, cultural and economic environment for present and future generations.With the increasing constraints on regional sustainable development by resource scarcity, different concepts for carrying capacity of natural resources were introduced, e.g., land [1], environment [2], agriculture [3], and water [4]
This study focused on the above limits of water resources carrying capacity (WRCC), and proposed a new concept, water resources design carrying capacity (WRDCC), to narrow the uncertainty of future WRCC calculations
The results show that the population size of WRDCC shows a rapid downward trend from a better to worse development mode (I to III), which makes sense
Summary
The concept of carrying capacity can be traced back to the 1970’s, which is defined as the number of individuals who can be supported in a given area within natural resource limits, without degrading the natural social, cultural and economic environment for present and future generations.With the increasing constraints on regional sustainable development by resource scarcity, different concepts for carrying capacity of natural resources were introduced, e.g., land [1], environment [2], agriculture [3], and water [4]. Some studies consider the WRCC to be a capacity to sustain a society with a good standard of living in a favorable water resource system [13]; some define it as the maximum bearing capacity of water resources for human activity in a certain stage of socio-economic development or a certain living standard in a favorable ecological system [14]. Others consider it a threshold value, for example, the capacity to support the activities of human beings [5]
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