A social-ecological coupling model for evaluating the human-water relationship in basins within the Budyko framework

Correctly understanding the coordinated development between the social economy and the ecological environment is the key to achieving the sustainable development of river basins. Previous coupling coordination degree models are empirical ones and very complex, without physical parameters. Here, a novel social-ecological coupling model was established to meet the challenge. Within the Budyko framework, nD was adopted to characterize the social-ecological coupling coordination degree of the human-water relationship in basins. In addition, a social-ecological coupling coordination model with basins in northern Shaanxi Province, China as units. The multiple linear regression (MLR) model was used to quantitatively analyze the evolutional relationship between economic development and ecological environment. Research results show that R2 is larger than 0.6 in the comprehensive evaluation results of the novel model. This means that the model can well reflect changes in vegetation coverage and simplify expression of the coordinated development of social-ecological systems. The evaluation results of the human-water relationship in the basins are gradually improved year by year and the coordination state evolved constantly. The two systems have positive promotion effects on each other. The social-ecological coupling coordination degree (D) is spatially different, and various basins are listed in a descending order as the Yanhe, Wuding, and Kuye river basins according to D. D of the three basins all evolves from 0.2 (moderate incoordination) to 0.6 (mild coordination). Combined with analysis of ARIMA time series, it is anticipated that the human-water relationship will reach moderate coordination by 2030. Finally, without changing the premise of the social-ecological coupling model, limitations of the current model factors can be improved for future research to provide policy suggestions exploring ways to coordinate development of social-ecological systems in northern Shaanxi.