Temporal Changes and Spatial Driving Mechanisms of Water Ecological Footprints in the Context of Urbanization: Taking Three Major Urban Agglomerations in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt as an Example

Abstract

Urbanization, which is accompanied by the flow of various production factors, leads to increasingly close spatial linkages between cities, and exerts profound influences on water resource use. This study focuses on the three major urban agglomerations in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt, and examines the temporal changes and spatial variations of its water resource use based on an improved water ecological footprints (WEFs) model that uses city-level data to calculate yield factors and considers the recycling of water resources. Moreover, this study investigates the spatial autocorrelation of WEFs and explores the spatial correlations between WEFs and three dimensions of urbanization (population, economy, land) in three urban agglomerations. The results show that the WEF is the highest in the downstream of the Yangtze River and the lowest in the upper stream. City-level WEFs have significant spatial autocorrelations, and cities with high water use are often concentrated. In some regions, urbanization and WEFs have significant spatial correlations, indicating the environmental externality of urbanization on water resource use. This study contributes to the methodology of developing localized water use evaluation indices, and provides insights into the driving factors of WEFs and the environmental externality of urbanization at different spatial scales. Its findings provide empirical support for formulating and implementing more targeted water resources protection measures in the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.