Abstract
The analysis of the relationship between regional resources and environment and human activities plays an important role in sustainable regional development. This study proposes the pressure–capacity–governance (PCG) model, an analytic framework for the assessment of the resources and environmental pressure (REP), carrying capacity (RECC) and governance (REG) levels over a large watershed scale, with the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) as the study area. A limiting factor analysis is used to recognize the limiting factors of the regional RECC. The coupling analysis of resources and environmental pressure–capacity–governance identifies the regional potential and utilization direction. The research results are as follows. (1) The REP, RECC and REG levels of the YREB exhibit spatial differences. The REPs of the upper reaches are lower than those of the lower reaches, which does not match the RECC but matches the REG levels. (2) The proportions of unused land, water resources, and atmospheric environmental quality are the main limiting factors of the regional RECC. (3) The PCG analysis framework is used as the basis to divide the YREB into several subareas to analyse the resources and environmental potential carrying capacity and utilization direction of different types of region. This research may provide decision-making references for regional sustainable development at the large watershed scale.
Highlights
With the rapid development of urbanization and industrialization in China, the contradiction between socioeconomic development and the population, resources and environment has become increasingly prominent, becoming a major bottleneck for regional sustainable development [1]
The local spatial autocorrelation shows that the hotspot clusters (High-High areas) of resources and environmental pressure (REP) indicator are mainly distributed in southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and Shanghai in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River
This study proposes the PCG model, an analytic framework for assessing the carrying capacity at the large watershed scale, with the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) as the study area, which makes up for the shortcoming of using a single city or county in previous research
Summary
With the rapid development of urbanization and industrialization in China, the contradiction between socioeconomic development and the population, resources and environment has become increasingly prominent, becoming a major bottleneck for regional sustainable development [1]. The concept of carrying capacity describes the relationship between resources, environment and human activities to ensure sustainability [2,3,4]. Studies have proposed the concept of planetary boundaries for estimating a safe operating space for humanity with respect to the functioning of the earth system [5,6]. This method is considerably large-scale and is unsuitable for regional-scale studies. Choosing an effective method has become an important issue in analysing the relationships between regional resources, environment and human activities, and providing operable and effective regulation countermeasures to realise a sustainable regional strategy
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