On The Optimization Model Of The Emergetic Ecological Footprint:Ecological Security Analytics Of The City Cluster Of The Basin Of The Xiangjiang River

The ecological environment provides the fundamental space for the survival and development of human being.Further,it has the explicit relationships with the regional security of ecology and sustainable development.Within the atmosphere of the rapid growth of the socio-economic development with the population explosion,there are enormous pressure on the ecological environment by the frequent human activities,which have consumed natural resources that excessed the sustainable capability.The contravention between human and the environment has been aggravated.For the commination of the regional development and the social progress by the environmental destruction and ecological degradation,the accumulation of ecological security problems that have been transformed into the restriction of regional sustainable development,which have got the worldwide attentions.The Emergetic Ecological Footprint?EEF?model has been considered to be a valuable and significant method for quantitative analytics of the regional security of ecology.However,there are also some limitations and insufficiencies,which the model counters the objectivity of the empirical researches in the regime of the ecological security,such as the ecological bias,the research projects incomprehensive considered,and the results by the research methods deviating from the empirical test,etc.By revealing the city cluster of the Xiangjiang River basin as an illustration,the paper proposed the ameliorations of the EEF model to correct the problems mentioned above.In addition,the ameliorations will be combined with 1)the emergy theorem;2)the ecological footprint theory;3)the related analysis methods of the ecological security and the mathematical statistics,organically.On the basis of verifying the rationality and the effectiveness of the optimized model,the comprehensive evaluations of the ecological security in the ecological-economy compound system of the city cluster of the basin of the Xiangjiang River were carried out.The paper targets on 1)providing ameliorated research ideas and approaches for the optimization of the evaluated methods of the ecological security analytics;2)offering the theoretical supports and the management advices for the regional ecological-economic system construction scientifically;3)giving the practical experiences for the studies on the regional sustainable development of the river basins.By discussing series of modifications and improvements,the paper has achieved some beneficial effects within the research methods and the practical applications.It has the important theoretical and practical significances for the ecological security researches of the regional ecological-economy system.The main achievements as follows:Firstly,the results of the EEF modified model,which brought the implications of the social and economic development into the evaluations of the Ecological Carrying Capacities?ECC?,acquired the higher degree of coupling with the regional development conditions.On the basis of the EEF model,the counting of the ecological carrying capacities were divided into bifurcate counting accounts:1)the natural resources account;2)the socio-economic virtual account.By comparison analytic with the original model,the validity check analyses indicated that the results of the modified model were enhanced coupling with the regional eco-economic development conditions.The modified model would fix the limitation of the weak sustainability evaluation caused by the ecological bias within the original model,and provide the research approach for the modification and optimization of the EEF method.Secondly,the EEF model for the water resources was constructed,as well as the evaluation methods were more appropriate than that of the traditional model.The paper combined the emergy theorem with the traditional ecological footprint model to make up the research methods,which supplement the plain argument in the regime of the calculation of the ecological security for the water resources supply and demand situation by the EEF model.It showed that,the results of the EEF model for the water resources,which were transformed to the general calculating standards by the unit of solar emergy,could be avoided the potential interferences by the artificial parameter settings and adjusted according to the actual situations of the locality.By the comparison with the traditional model,the accuracy of the Ecological Security Assessment?ESA?for the regional water resources have been greatly improved by the EEF model.With the basis research of the EEF model for the water resources,the ecological carrying capacity was much larger than the ecological footprint,and leaded to the ecological results of the ecological surplus situations within the city cluster of the basin of the Xiangjiang River during the study periods,with the average value of1.95×10^-1 hm² per capita.However,the unstable fluctuations situations,which were caused by the great annual variations of the water resources ecological carrying capacity within the city cluster of the basin of the Xiangjiang River,have been shown the ecological surplus.Thus,although the water resources were relatively abundant,it got the characters of the great annual variations and the irregular distributions in space and time,and due to the influences by the monsoon climate,which challenges the water resources sustainable utilization within the city cluster of the basin of the Xiangjiang River.By structural consideration,the water for productive use that annually shared 87.90%in the total water ecological footprint,accounted for the largest proportion.In spatial distribution,the space allocations of the water resources carrying capacity didn't match with that of the water resources footprint.The water resources within the Xiangtan City got the maximum annual per capita ecological footprint and the minimum annual per capita ecological carrying capacity.Whereas,the water resources within the Yongzhou City got the minimum annual per capita ecological footprint and the maximum annual per capita ecological carrying capacity.As a matter of fact,the exploitation and utilization of the water resources within the city cluster of the basin of the Xiangjiang River were in the tolerable safe range.But,risks of the water resource unsustainable utilizations will be still remained,including the affections of the water resource ecological pressures of the Yueyang City and the Xiangtan City exceeded the critical value during the drought periods.Thirdly,the related studies of the ecological security of the city cluster within the basin of the Xiangjiang River have been carried out,using the optimized EEF model.Based on the related research results of the ecological bias modification and the EEF of water resources,the optimized model of the integrated regional EEF were carried out,which were applied to the dynamic evaluations of the ecological security within the city cluster throughout the perspective of the local ecological footprint.As trends of analytic revealed,there were ecological imbalances between the supply and the demand within the city cluster,which had the annual ecological deficit of 2.98hm² per capita.Though the resource utilization efficiency and the stability of the ecological-economic system in the city cluster have enhanced.For the ecological carrying capacity could not meet the increasing requirement of the rapid economic development,the pressures of the ecological environment continuous increased,and threaten ecological security of the city cluster remained.According to the analyses results of the ecological-economic systems evaluations,the ecological security situation of the Hengyang City was worst by the comparion with the other cities within the basin of Xiangjiang River.The major reasons were due to the large proportion of the heavy-industry,the high intensity of resource utilization,and the large energy consumption of per unit output value,relatively.On the other hand,the Changsha City developed with the extraordinary interaction of the ecology and economy,which have the higher efficiency of resource utilization,the advanced industrial structure,and the higher coordinative level of the environment-economy compound system compared with the performances of the other cities during the selected period.Fourthly,the transmission of the emergetic ecological footprint was closely related to the regional social and economic development wthin the city cluster of the basin of the Xiangjiang River.The social and economic factors,such as the population,the economic structure,the input intensity of the city construction,the living standard of the urban and rural residents,etc.,were the main driving contributions for the transmission of the emergetic ecological footprint.At present,the plus-driving effects of the socio-economic development to the per capita emergetic ecological footprint were much stronger than the minus-driving effects.The industrial development mode and the food demand were the principal factors,which prompted the growth of the local emergetic ecological footprint.Therefore,it should be paid attention to the driving effects of the development mode to the ecological environment in the process of optimizing the social and economic structures.Fifthly,the development trend of the ecological security within the city cluster of the basin of the Xiangjiang River was grim.The results of the emergetic ecological footprint predictions and the forewarning assessments showed that,both the emergetic ecological footprint and the emergetic ecological carrying capacity of the city cluster would be increasing in varying degrees from the year of 2015 to 2024.However,the growth rates of the emergetic ecological carrying capacity predicted values were lower than that of the emergetic ecological footprint predicted values,which would very likely to let the ecological deficit of the city cluster enlarge continually in the forecast period.During the selected forecast period,the city cluster would be encounter potential hazard,which would be in the states of the extremely insecurity.Furthermore,the rank of the ecological forewarning would be enhanced from the rank4?insecurity?to the rank 5?extremely insecurity?which is the highest rank in the ecological forewarning assessment.The further deteriorations of the ecological environments would seriously endanger the sustainable development of the ecological-economic systems within the city cluster.In addition,the further researches will be focused on the studies of the counting accounts of the ecological environmental pollutions and the carrying capacity on the recycling of resources,the optimizations of the socio-economic indicator system for the driven force research of the ecological footprint transmission,and the analyses of the regional diversity of the converted coefficients between the related theories,etc.