A Coevolution Model of the Coupled Society—Water Resources—Environment Systems: An Application in a Case Study in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

Abstract

Interactions among society, water resources, and environment systems have become increasingly prominent with the progressively far-reaching impact of human activities. Therefore, this paper aims to construct a co-evolution model to establish the mutual feedback relationship among society, water resources, and environment from the perspective of socio-hydrology. Firstly, social factors such as environmental sensitivity, environmental protection awareness, and technological level are introduced to this model to describe the coevolutionary trajectory of society, water resources and environment subsystems. Then, this model is implemented in 11 provincial administrative regions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the degree of coordination of their coupling is evaluated. Results show that the water-use efficiency of each provincial administrative region in the Yangtze River Economic Belt gradually increases during the forecast period. The coupling-coordinated degree of each provincial administrative region of the Yangtze River Economic Belt has greatly improved during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, reflecting that policy support has played a significant role in the coordinated development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The dynamic fluctuation process of environmental sensitivity effectively depicts the co-evolution process of the coupling system, which provides a reference for the subsequent exploration and cognition of the human-water coevolutionary mechanism.