Discussion on the Available Water Resources Index for Major Function Zoning in Xinjiang
基于绿洲的新疆主体功能区划可利用水资源指标探讨

Proper measurement and evaluation of the potential of water resources is one of the key basic works for major function zoning. There are great differences in territorial size, geographical conditions and socio-economic functions among different regions due to the great diversity of natural environment, resources endowments and social economy in our country, so it is impossible to implement the provincial major function zoning based on the national unified index. Besides, the distribution of population in Western arid areas is uneven, and the density of population is quite different among different cities and is far below the national average. The available-water-resources- per-capita-index (WCI) is one of the most commonly used indices for the evaluation of water resources, but its application in western arid region is not as satisfied as expected. Affected by the characteristics of population and water resources distribution, WCI cannot effectively reflect the real condition of water resources in arid areas, and as a result, affecting the accuracy of the major function zoning. Therefore, studies and experiments on some special regions are needed to get suitable evaluation index for provincial major function zoning. In this study, based on the characteristics of water resources dissipation in Xinjiang, a new water resources evaluation index, i.e. available- water-resources-per-unit-oasis-area-index (WOI) was put forward and the computational procedure and hierarchies threshold of it were defined. Moreover, the potential of available water resources was evaluated by both WOI and WCI based on the analysis of spatial distribution characteristic of available water resources in Xinjiang. The following are the main conclusions: 1) The spatial distribution of water resources in Xinjiang is significantly uneven, and the water resource in most regions is relatively scarce; 2) Compared with available-water-resources-per-capita, the spatial distribution characteristic of available-water-resources-per-unit-oasis-area is more similar with that of available water resources, which indicates that WOI could better reflect the status of available water in Xinjiang; 3) The water resources evaluation results by WOI could better describe the distributions of water-rich and water-lack regions, and WOI is also proved to be a more suitable index for the evaluation of available water resources in Xinjiang Major Function Zoning. The design and computational procedure of the WOI put forward in this paper would provide references for rational design of water resources evaluation index for other western arid regions.