The driving effect of spatial-temporal difference of water resources carrying capacity in the Yellow River Basin

Water resources is one of the basic resources for human social development. In the context of China's rapid economic development, how to achieve the sustainable development of water resources, social economy and ecological environment has become an urgent issue. Water Resources Carrying Capacity (WRCC) is an important indicator of the degree of coordinated social, economic and ecological development that can be supported by water resources in a certain region. Based on the internal mechanism of WRCC, this paper constructs the evaluation system of WRCC, and estimates WRCC of 9 provinces in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) from 2009 to 2018 by the entropy method. Using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) model, we analyze the driving effects of WRCC differences in the YRB from both spatial and temporal aspects. Main conclusions are as follows: (1) There is an inherent mechanism between water resources, social economy and eco-environment, and the coordinated development of the three subsystems can promote the improvement of WRCC; (2) From 2009 to 2018, WRCC of the YRB showed a relatively stable upward trend, in which the sewage treatment effect and the technical effect were the main factors promoting WRCC, while the economic effect had a negative weakening function throughout the research period; (3) There were obvious differences in the WRCC of each province. We choose Shandong and Gansu as the comparison objects, then analyze the factors causing differences of WRCC through the driving effects decomposition analysis.