Assessing environmental risks for high intensity agriculture using the material flow analysis method —a case study of the Dongting Lake basin in South Central China

Abstract

This study primarily examined the assessment of environmental risk in high intensity agricultural areas. Dongting Lake basin was taken as a case study, which is one of the major grain producing areas in China. Using data obtained from 1989 to 2012, we applied Material Flow Analysis (MFA) to show the material consumption, pollutant output and production storage in the agricultural-environmental system and assessed the environmental risk index on the basis of the MFA results. The results predicted that the status of the environmental quality of the Dongting Lake area is unsatisfactory for the foreseeable future. The direct material input (DMI) declined by 13.9%, the domestic processed output (DPO) increased by 28.21%, the intensity of material consumption (IMC) decreased by 36.7%, the intensity of material discharge (IMD) increased by 10%, the material productivity (MP) increased by 27 times, the environmental efficiency (EE) increased by 15.31 times, and the material storage (PAS) increased by 0.23%. The DMI and DPO was higher at rural places on the edge of cities, whereas the risk of urban agriculture has arisen due to the higher increasing rate of DMI and DPO in cities compared with the counties. The composite environmental risk index increased from 0.33 to 0.96, indicating that the total environmental risk changed gradually but seriously during the 24 years assessed. The driving factors that affect environmental risk in high intensity agriculture can be divided into five classes: social, economic, human, natural and disruptive incidents. This study discussed a number of effective measures for protecting the environment while ensuring food production yields. Additional research in other areas and certain improvements of this method in future studies may be necessary to develop a more effective method of managing and controlling agricultural-environmental interactions.

A comprehensive assessment of agricultural intensification scenarios for the Dongting Lake basin in south-central China in 2030

“…6a), the risk is located in areas with larger arable land area, such as Changde County, Taoyuan County, Nixiang County, Liuyang County, and Yiyang City. The risk distribution in ND is heterogeneous; the composite environmental risk index of some counties around the central cities is higher than that in farther counties, which is similar to the result of 1989-2012 (Yin et al 2015).…”

“…As discussed above, the subject of scenario analysis in this study is to predict environmental risk under different agricultural intensification scenarios. The factors influencing agricultural environmental risk include social, economic, policy, human, natural, and disruptive incident factors, as discussed in our previous study (Yin et al 2015).…”

“…To obtain a value for integrated environmental risk for areas with high-intensity agriculture, we used a composite environmental index (Yin et al 2015).…”

“…The total material input, output, and agricultural production from 1989 to 2012 (Yin et al 2015) and the results of scenario predictions in 2030 are shown in Fig. 5.…”

Wetland Area Change from 1986-2016 in the Dongting Lake Watershed at the Sub-Watershed Scale

“…The Dongting Lake Watershed (DTLW) in southcentral China is the second largest watershed of the Yangtze River. It has a convenient geographic position and well-developed water system that has attracted many residents and industries, distributed along the banks of these lakes and rivers [18]. DTLW is an essential intersection zone between the One Belt and One Road and is the featured area of implementation for the Yangtze River Economic Belt Policy [19,20].…”