Temporal and spatial evolution and obstacle diagnosis of resource and environment carrying capacity in the Loess Plateau

Huan Huang, Rui Wang, Jue Wang, Jixing Chai and Yi Xiao

PLOS ONE, 2021, vol. 16, issue 8, 1-24

Abstract: Natural resources are scarce in the Loess Plateau, and the ecological environment is fragile. Sustainable development requires special attention to resource and environmental carrying capacity (RECC). This study selected 24 representative cities in five natural areas of the Loess Plateau; used the entropy-weight-based TOPSIS method to evaluate and analyze the RECC of each city and region from 2013 to 2018; established a diagnosis model to identify the obstacle factors restricting the improvement of RECC; and constructed the theoretical framework of the RECC system mechanism. The results show that the RECC of the Loess Plateau is increasing in general but is relatively small. The environmental and social subsystems have the highest and lowest carrying capacities, respectively. There is an evident contradiction between economic development and the environment. Population density, investment in technological innovation, per capita sown area, and per capita water resources are the main obstacles affecting the improvement of RECC in the Loess Plateau. Such evaluations and diagnoses can support ecological civilization and sustainable development.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0256334 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 56334&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0256334

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256334

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().