Evaluation of the water conservation capacity of the Weihe River Basin based on the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs model

Abstract The Weihe River Basin has the worst soil erosion in the Loess Plateau. As the largest tributary of the Yellow River, the water conservation capacity in the Weihe River Basin is of great significance to the Yellow River Basin and the Loess Plateau. In this study, the volume of the water conservation in the Weihe River Basin is estimated based on the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs model, and the water conservation capacity of the basin is measured after excluding the influence of rainfall and evapotranspiration. The results show that from 1987 to 2019, the water conservation in the Weihe River Basin showed an overall trend of decreasing first and then increasing. The increasing trend of water conservation is greater than that of water production. The water conservation in the Weihe River Basin decreased to the lowest in 2005 and increased to the highest in 2019. Spatially, the water conservation volume is large in the south and west and small in the north and east. The water conservation volumes increase in the middle reaches of the Weihe River, the source of the Weihe River and the Jinghe River Basin. The overall capacity of the water yield and water conservation in the Weihe River Basin shows the same increasing trend. The projects of returning farms to forests and ecological management contribute to improving the water conservation capacity in the Weihe River Basin.