Public Perception Against Water Resource Change And Its Impacts

Water resource change is very important issue for worldwide focus of attention, especially in recent dramatic change of mountain glaciers and runoff in the arid and semiarid regions. The snow and ice is important solid water resource in the Hexi region of northwestern China, which has been affected by global warming and has been melting in accelerated retreating speed. Public perception and selections of adaptation measures of water resource problem is necessary for regional development under glacier change. We need to find out the understanding and perception of local resident to the regional environment change for sustainable development of the man-earth relationship. Then we can study the measures and making policy for regional environment and water resource change. The Key point is to carry out the questionnaire investigation and references analyses and to compare the data together and then get the scientific interpretation.This study mainly focused on the investigation in two local areas of the Hexi region, which was Liangzhou in the Shiyang River watershed and Guazhou in the Shulehe River of the arid region, respectively. Result showed that, most of the respondents(>50%) in Guazhou considered that the water resource in the past decades has not changed severely, but the respondents(>50%) in Liangzhou think that the water resource in Shiyang River has reduced obviously during past years. The perceptual intensity in these two areas is 4.3(Liangzhou area) and 3.8(Guazhou area), respectively, which was coincident with that of the previous scientific study. Public perception for the regional entironment change was also investigated in this work. More people in the Guazhou agreed that the environment is getting better that before. However, the respondents in Wuwei think the environment is getting worse during recent years, as the desert sand in expanding in Wuwei and frequently occurred dust storm activity during springtime. As a driving factor of regional environment change, water conservancy facilities also have effect on the resident community of the arid regions. Shulehe River were important for improve the environment, but the resident in Wuwei has different opinions, considering the reservoirs in Shiyang river has adverse effect to regional environment. We find that, though the respondents has difference in degree of education, the public perception of people in local government and the peasant household showed on difference to water resource and regional environment change between each other, which may imply that the public perception is mainly affected by the resident attention and media publicity to those problems, but not affected by the degree of education. Therefore, for the policy decision makers, they should pay more attention to improve the propaganda work and popularization of science, in order to make the policy get better application.Solution was proposed in the questionnaire investigation for the water resource problems in this study to delay or adapt such environmental influence. Agricultural water tickets, agricultural planting structural adjustment and reservoirs building was considered as the most efficient measures for water use in current period at both two areas. Thus reservoir is necessary for solve recent water resource problem under accelerated glacier melting and water shortage. Water tickets are essential and could control the water use in the arid regions. Besides these measures, more efficient measures are needed for better change the environment and water resource change in Hexi region.