A Quantitative Exploration On Urban Water Resources Carring Capacity In The Yangtze River Delta

Water is essential to life, an indispensable element of animate and non-animate systems on earth and also a fundamental resource to the national economic and social development. With the increasing population growth, rapid economic development and speeding-up of urbanization, demands on water resources also rocket, thus generating a series of issues like shortage of water resources and deterioration of environment. Now water-shortage has become an urgent problem that needs to be addressed by human kind and is decisive to the social stability and sustainable economic development. Under this context of new demands on the quality and quantity of water resources imposed by city development and of the difference in water endorsement, exploration, utilization and management of different regions, differing problems have risen in some parts. To name just one, pollution-induced water shortage in some southern cities has become a concern.This paper mainly consists of three parts -the theoretical research, the quantitative research and the applied research. The core of theoretical research is research of the water resources carrying capacity of a theoretical model. On the basis of analyzing the water resources carrying capacities home and abroad, the paper, through explaining the definition, features, structure of and factors impacting water resources carrying capability, establishes the theoretical system for water resource carrying capability, thus laying the ground for quantitative research of it.The key objective of quantitative research is to establish a Quantitative Model (QM) for water resources carrying capacity. The essay, linking the reality of the water resource problems in the Yangtze River triangle, and after choosing and establishing the QM for water resources carrying capability, social system and economic system explores and establishes a QM for water resources carrying capability suited to the local reality.To verify the models and methods presented above, they are applied to the city of Nantong, located on the coast of the Yangtze River. After a large scale survey of the city statistics, the social economic indexes and water demands of 2010, 2015, 2020 years are forecasted, then water resources gross and its available quanity of these years are calculated. With the predicted statistics and making use of the established model for water resources carrying capability, the author, through the...