WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT IN TARIM BASIN AND ITS ECO-ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
塔里木盆地水土资源开发及其生态环境效应

The importance of water resource is outstanding in developing production and protecting ecological environment, especially for the arid area in Xinjiang, where the ecological environment is very fragile. Therefore, to explore the eco-environmental effects caused by human being in the process of developing and utilizing water resource, and the mechanism to co-ordinate the economic, environment and social effect in the arid area will contribute a lot the regional sustainable development. It is argued that the environmental effect of human activity should be discussed from two aspects, that is, positive and negative. The beneficial effects include the enlargement of oasis area and the improvement of the local climatic condition, the increase of land productivity by means of water conservancy, and the increase of water use efficiency. Furthermore, much concern should be paid to many disadvantageous effects, including earth desertification, earth swamping and soil secondary salinity, natural vegetation degeneration, quality of underground water worse and countermeasures should be put into practice.