Sustainability of global Golden Inland Waterways

Yichu Wang, Xiabin Chen, Alistair G. L. Borthwick, Tianhong Li, Huaihan Liu, Shengfa Yang, Chunmiao Zheng, Jianhua Xu and Jinren Ni ()
Additional contact information
Yichu Wang: Peking University
Xiabin Chen: Peking University
Alistair G. L. Borthwick: The University of Edinburgh
Tianhong Li: Peking University
Huaihan Liu: National Inland Waterway Regulation Engineering Technology Research Center
Shengfa Yang: Chongqing Jiaotong University
Chunmiao Zheng: Southern University of Science and Technology
Jianhua Xu: Peking University
Jinren Ni: Peking University

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Sustainable inland waterways should meet the needs of navigation without compromising the health of riverine ecosystems. Here we propose a hierarchical model to describe sustainable development of the Golden Inland Waterways (GIWs) which are characterized by great bearing capacity and transport need. Based on datasets from 66 large rivers (basin area > 100,000 km2) worldwide, we identify 34 GIWs, mostly distributed in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America, typically following a three-stage development path from the initial, through to the developing and on to the developed stage. For most GIWs, the exploitation ratio, defined as the ratio of actual to idealized bearing capacity, should be less than 80% due to ecological considerations. Combined with the indices of regional development, GIWs exploitation, and riverine ecosystem, we reveal the global diversity and evolution of GIWs’ sustainability from 2015 to 2050, which highlights the importance of river-specific strategies for waterway exploitation worldwide.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15354-1 Abstract (text/html)

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:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-15354-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15354-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().