Water Supply (Aug 2023)

Dynamic cluster analysis of urban river ecosystem using water, climate, and economy nexus

  • Xuebo Yan,
  • Xuelong Gao,
  • Zhifa Jiang,
  • Jiehui Zhang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.2166/ws.2023.192
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 23, no. 8
pp. 3476 – 3485

Abstract

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Urban rivers are the origin of civilizations, the source of water supply, and the center of recreational and sports activities. The role of rivers can be investigated from various political, cultural, security, drought, economic, and health aspects. This study was conducted in order to identify the influencing components of urban rivers on ecosystem sustainability. The weight coefficients of climatic, social, economic, and ecological components were evaluated through dynamic cluster analysis, and their role in ecosystem sustainability was quantified. In addition, the relationship between water-based factors and environmental components was determined in finding the best components of river ecosystem evaluation for future decisions. The provided analysis can increase the stability of the urban river ecosystem and can rank the priority of the impact factors. Ecological environment statistics, nature measures, economic parameters, and land cover rate substantially affected the visual influence of the urban river ecosystem. Results showed that the proposed evaluation provided a reasonable framework to evaluate the sustainability of the urban river ecosystem and visual perception to improve the design efficiency by decision-makers. HIGHLIGHTS A dynamic analysis model is proposed to evaluate the river system.; The required information has been collected from four different ecosystems and put in the form of cluster analysis.; The sustainable management model of the river ecosystem can be obtained from the relationship between water, climate, and economy.;

Keywords