Analysis And Research Of The Environmental Carrying Capacity Of Southern Shaanxi

With the high speed development of social economy and the rapid growth of theurbanization, the growing ability of human to develop and rebuild nature makes thecontradictions among population, resources and environment increased. It also bringsout the increasing environment problems and restricts the development of socialeconomy.Southern Shaanxi is located in the QinBa Mountain areas whose ecologicalenvironment relatively fragile. With the advancement of Western Development process,the economy of Southern Shaanxi region developed rapidly and environment problemswere resulted at the same time. How to achieve better sustainable development hasbecome a problem that urgent to be solved. Accurate understanding of the regionalenvironmental carrying capacity is the important basis to achieve regional sustainabledevelopment. Therefore, the study of environmental carrying capacity has greatpractical significance.The environmental carrying capacity research of Southern Shaanxi as a main lineand the predecessors’ research as a basis, the relevant concepts, theories and researchmethods of the regional environmental carrying capacity are in this paper discussed.Combined with the characteristics of Southern Shaanxi, the evaluation index system ofthe environmental carrying capacity of Southern Shaanxi is built from3aspects:resource environment, social environment and economic environment. Theenvironmental carrying quantity and environmental carrying rate of Southern Shaanxiare calculated by the state space method and carrying rate method. The researchconclusions are given below: (1) The environmental carrying capacity of Southern Shaanxi had a trend of slowimprovement during2008-2009, a modest increase in2010and continues to improvein2011-2012, and the environmental carrying rate of Southern Shaanxi fell to82.03%in2012, to reduce the high load condition.(2) The weight of each index for the evaluation system shows that the relevantindex of water environment, ecological environment, population pressures andeconomic environment are the factors that have a major impact on the change ofSouthern Shaanxi regional environmental carrying capacity. Therefore, in the processof social economy development in Southern Shaanxi, the focus should be thesustainable development of economy and ecological environment protection.(3) The forecast result indicates that, at the end of the twelfth five-year plan,Southern Shaanxi environmental carrying situation will continue to improve and therelationship between regional social economic development and resources environmentwill become more harmonious, which help to achieve the in the twelfth five-year planexpressed goal of building a green ecological Shaanxi.