Special Column: Watershed Geography
ZHU A-Xing, ZHU Liangjun, SHI Yaxing, QIN Chengzhi, LIU Junzhi
In the context of the changing global environment and rapidly developing economies, the conflict between economic development and resource/environmental conservation is becoming severe. To resolve or relieve the conflict, decision makers need a new knowledge system and scientific decision-making tools. The integrated study of physical geography, which takes the spatial variation and interaction processes of natural geographic elements as main research contents, has the responsibility of providing the new knowledge system and scientific decision-making tools for decision makers. As a relatively closed and independent spatial unit, the watershed provides a natural spatial unit for decision making. The spatial distribution of geographic elements and the mechanism of their interaction processes inside a watershed become the new knowledge system to resolve or relieve this increasingly intensified conflict. Integrated watershed modeling has become an effective way to build this new knowledge system. The effectiveness of different decisions considering the economic and environmental benefits should be evaluated for decision makers before a final decision, which can be provided by a scenario analysis based on integrated watershed modeling. Therefore, from the perspective of resolving or relieving the conflict between economic development and resource/environmental conservation, integrated watershed modeling and scenario analysis is developing into a new paradigm for the integrated study of physical geography in the new era. In this article, the scientific challenges of the integrated study of physical geography based on integrated watershed modeling and scenario analysis were discussed through two case studies of scenario analysis for watershed management, which basically represent two types of questions that decision makers are concerned with. The first type of questions is which kinds of best management practices (BMPs) should be selected, where these BMPs should be allocated, and what economic and environmental benefits are after the implementation of these BMPs. The second type of questions is that under the given objectives of economic and environmental benefits, where the selected BMPs should be allocated and how large spatial extents they should occupy. In conclusion, the integrated study of physical geography based on integrated watershed modeling and scenario analysis should have the characteristics of systematization, spatialization, quantification, ease of use, and decision-making friendly.