Abstract
It has been a consensus that water resources are unevenly distributed in space, often resulting in imbalance between water demand and supply. Quantitative characterization of this inequality of water resources in a region can help prioritize water management by identifying marginalized regions with comprehensive considerations. A framework for evaluating spatial equilibrium of water resources has been proposed by coupling variable fuzzy sets and Gini coefficient methods in this study. The framework was then demonstrated by its application to the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YEB) in China to analyze the dynamics of the spatial equilibrium of its water resources from 2009 to 2018 using three indicators, namely, water resources load index, water and soil matching coefficient and water use benefit. The results show that the spatial equilibrium state of water resources in the YEB is stable in a critical state throughout the period of study, with slight fluctuations. The inequality of water resources load is the main disturbance factor, providing the water management priority toward a better balance between water resources utilization and demand.
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Funding
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 51879010), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC0407900 and 2019YFC0408902), the Graduate Innovation Fund in Beijing Key Laboratory of Urban Hydrological Cycle and Sponge City Technology (HYD2020IFDC03) and the 111 Project (Grant no. B18006).
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Yafeng Yang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Data curation, Data interpretation, Drafting manuscript. Hongrui Wang: Supervision, Resources, Funding acquisition. Cheng Wang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Drafting manuscript. Yuanyuan Zhang: Methodology, Software, Calculation and results analysis, Validation.
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The manuscript has not been published elsewhere, and it has not been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere. We also have no conflicts of interest to disclose. All authors have seen and approved the manuscript and have contributed significantly to the paper. The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Yang, Y., Wang, H., Wang, C. et al. Coupling Variable Fuzzy Sets and Gini Coefficient to Evaluate the Spatial Equilibrium of Water Resources. Water Resour 49, 292–300 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0097807822020154
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0097807822020154