Carrying Capacity Assessment in Water Resource Management
Summary
Carrying capacity assessment in water resource management evaluates the threshold at which water supplies, ecological functions and socio-economic demands remain in balance over time. By integrating hydrological modelling, environmental indicators and social-economic metrics, these assessments quantify resource availability, consumption patterns and ecosystem resilience. Common approaches include index systems, multivariate statistics and process-based simulation, often supported by geographic information systems to resolve spatial variability. Such assessments guide allocation of surface and groundwater, inform urban and agricultural planning, and underpin adaptive policy responses to climate change, pollution and demographic shifts. Recent advances emphasise the need for dynamic, scenario-based analyses that capture feedback loops between human activities and natural processes, enabling decision-makers to anticipate stressors and optimise interventions at basin and regional scales.
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Technical terms
Carrying capacity: The maximum level of water use or population supportable by a water system without causing ecological degradation or resource depletion.
Set-pair analysis: A method for handling uncertainty and interconnection among system components by evaluating degrees of similarity, difference and opposition.
Principal component analysis (PCA): A statistical technique to reduce dimensionality by transforming correlated variables into a set of uncorrelated components ranked by variance explained.
System dynamics model: A simulation framework that captures feedback loops and time-dependent interactions among resource, environmental and socio-economic subsystems.
Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT): A process-based hydrological model used to simulate water flow, sediment transport and nutrient cycling at basin scale.
References
- Comprehensive Evaluation of Water Resources Carrying Capacity in the Han River Basin. Water (2021).
- Evaluation of natural support capacity of water resources using principal component analysis method: a case study of Fuyang district, China. Applied Water Science (2020).
- Simulation of Water Resources Carrying Capacity in Xiong’an New Area Based on System Dynamics Model. Water (2019).
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