What influences the resilience of complex natural-economic-social
systems at the watershed scale? A case study from the Erhai Lake Basin,
China
Abstract
Ecological resilience is an important foundation for conducting regional
ecological management. A watershed is a basic unit to conduct ecological
management, and in a watershed, the nature-economy-society is a complex
composite system. However, what are the links between human activities,
management behavior, and the natural environment on a watershed scale?
How is the resilience of complex natural-economic-social ecosystems
measured? Moreover, in previous studies, little attention was on the
watershed scale. Therefore, this study selected the Erhai watershed in
China as the study area, constructed an integrated evaluation method of
a water-scale complex natural-economic-social system, analyzed the
coupling coordination degree of each subsystem, and simulated the
changes of ecosystem resilience in the Erhai watershed under different
policy scenarios using OWA. The results show that: The resilience of the
Erhai Basin from 2005 to 2020 is continuously strong, with the average
value increasing from 0.23 to 0.42, but the inter-regional differences
increase, and the basin faces the problem of uncoordinated regional
development. Fiscal revenues have an important impact on environmental
governance behavior, and high fiscal revenues lead to high ecological
protection and governance inputs, thus increasing resilience. In the
scenario simulation, the ”conservation-first type” has the highest
resilience, attaches importance to infrastructure and environmental
protection, increases investment in social security and health, and
relies on tourism development.