Zhongmin Xu

• Chinese Academy of Sciences

The ecological water diversion project in the Heihe River Basin is the first successful case in China in which the ecological systems in a river basin have been rescued. This project serves as a valuable example for the management of ecosystems in other inland river basins. This paper reviews the integrated studies of the water–ecosystem–economy re...

The generality of the Christiansen model is verified using potential evaporation data as reference for the unit model developed in stella. The spatial model in SME is calibrated with data from six hydrological and meteorological stations around the study area. The results show that the observed and simulated data have a good fit, in which the revis...

A shortage of water has limited the socio-economic development of the Heihe River Basin in northwestern China and has led to many ecological and economic problems. Only the development and application of integration tools can effectively represent the functionality of the watershed and aid in strategic decision making. In the framework of SME, modu...

介绍了“数字黑河”模型集成研究的进展。①流域科学研究中的模型集成由发展流域集成模型和建模环境这2个主题所构成，前者可概括为“水—土—气—生—人”集成模型，后者是支持集成模型的高效开发的软件工具，注重于应用先进的信息技术为建模提供支撑。②将模型集成分为知识途径和技术途径，讨论了建模环境在模型集成中的作用，以及科学模型和流域管理模型的关系。③回顾了黑河流域模型集成的总体目标是发展两种类型的集成模型，其中第一种回应科学目标，是地球系统模型在流域尺度上的具体体现，以建成能够综合反映流域水文—生态—经济相互作用的模型为标志；第二种集成模型回应管理目标，以建成空间显式的流域水资源决策支持系统为目标。④对黑河流域已有的水文、地下水、水资源、陆面过程、土地利用、生态、社会经济与生态经济建模工作做了系统的综述...

Water resource is the basic and necessary input in the process of production and various consumption patterns of products and goods cause different impacts on the water resource using. It is very important to analyze and measure those different influences, which is especially good for the sustainability of water resource, construction of sustainabl...

Areas of water shortage comprise many smaller sub-areas into which water is transported from external sources. Fairness and efficiency of distribution are overriding principles. Each local area requires adequate water for community and ecological purposes as well as a supply sufficient to maximise economic growth. Within arid and semi-arid areas, t...

In the Heihe River Basin in the arid inland area of northwest China, the distribution of water resources in vegetation landscape zones controls the ecosystems. The carbon sequestration capacity of vegetation is analyzed in relation to water resources and vegetation growing conditions. During the last 20 years, the vegetation ecosystems have degener...

This paper provides applications of the integrated assessment (IA) approach in a case study in the Heihe River Basin of Northwest China. Some socio-economic and ecological impact results of forestry land use scenarios are presented in the paper. While seven types of land use scenarios for carbon sequestration purposes were considered for the IA app...

Decision-makers face a range of choices on how to manage ecosystems. Appropriate decisions should be based on weighing up the benefits and costs of alternative ecosystem management strategies, including monetary and non-monetary benefits and costs. This paper reports an application of the choice modeling (CM) method in rural China in obtaining mone...

To mitigate the uncertainty of hydrological system, which would enlarge the uncertainty of water property trade, the paper introduced a two part deployment method of water resource property, and stimulated the efficiency of water property trade based on the game theory, with a case in the main body of Zhangye prefecture in Heihe River basin, includ...

Increasing shortage of water resources is an uncontroversial fact with the population growth and the economy development in Gansu Province of Northwest China. How to alleviate the pressing of water resource is a major issue faced by decision-makers. Water footprint research explores a new viewpoint to water resource management. In this paper, Gansu...

Based on formal ImPACT identity which describes environmental impacts (Im) as a function of population (P), affluence (A), intensity use (C) and efficiency (T), a new "ImPACTS" identity as a framework for sustainability science was produced, where S denote the level of social resources, m is assigned to management and I is changed from formal envir...

The ecological footprint of China’s provinces is calculated in this paper. In general, China’s development is not sustainable because its ecological footprint is beyond its bio-capacity. The sustainability status of each province in China is presented. Ulanowicz’s development capacity formula was introduced to discuss the relationship of developmen...

The ecological footprint method put forward and improved by William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel presents a methodologically simple but integrated framework for national natural capital accounting, which is capable of measuring the impact of Human's consumption on ecosystem. Based on the ecological footprint theory and calculation method, a flow net...

China's economic growth over the past several decades has been among the highest in the world. It has been fueled by cheap fossil fuel energy so energy consumption has risen rapidly, but there are signs that negative feedbacks in the form of waste and inefficiency may affect future development. If energy throughput exceeds the capacity of the envir...

The contingent valuation method (CVM) is a direct interview approach that can be used to provide acceptable measures of the economic value of preservation of natural resources. While the estimates from CVM may not be perfect, neither are estimates from any other economic or physical science model. The need for an assessment of the nonmarket benefit...

The quantitative measurement of sustainable development has become one of the frontiers of sustainable development research since the sustainable development concept was put forward. The ecological footprint indicator, put forward and development by W. E. Ress and M. Wackernagel since the early 1990s, is to measure the human impact on the earth and...

Because humans consume the products and services of nature, every one of us has an impact on the earth. Does the human load stay within global carrying capacity? The ecological footprint concept has been designed to answer this question and estimate man's impact on nature. The ecological footprint of any defined population (from a single individual...