A tentative discussion on the monitoring of water resources in China

Abstract. With the rapid economy development and social civilization progress, the Chinese Government also is improving ecological environmental conditions. More efforts have been made to solve water problems through the implementation of stringent water resources management, as a key government policy on water. Thus, monitoring of water resources has been strengthened, being a main component of the hydrological work in recent years. Compared with routine hydrological monitoring, water resources monitoring pays more attention to the quantity and quality variations of regional waters, to reflect the status of water in river basins and administrative regions. In this paper, the overall layout of the hydrometric network in China is presented, monitoring efforts of the natural water cycle and water consumptions are analyzed, methodologies of water resources monitoring, which are commonly applied in the country, are summed up. Taking the hydrometric network planning on interprovincial boundary waterbodies as example, a summary of the planning at interprovincial boundary river sections is presented. The planning can meet the need of water resources management of administrative divisions. It can also improve the overall water resources monitoring for the country.


Water resources in China
 the total amount of water resources in the country:  The amount of water availability per capita: International conference on water resources assessment and seasonal prediction China is a country with limited water resources. According to the 2rd national water resources assessment in early 21 century:

Problems facing
International conference on water resources assessment and seasonal prediction Following with the rapid economic development & increasing impact of climate changes in last decades, contradictions between water supply & water demand in China is outstanding: water scarcity in the north is intensified water pollution in the south is serious water utilization efficiency is poor in comparison with those in developed countries All these increase the vulnerability of regional water shortage and deterioration of eco-environment system. Yellow riverqingdao

Luanhetianjin
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Beijing shanghai
International conference on water resources assessment and seasonal prediction To solve water problems and improve the water environment conditions, Chinese government also promoted the stringent water resources management system as a key government policy on water in 2009.
The new policy focus on the administrative divisions as units, pushing the local governments at all levels to take full responsiblity for the rational and effective management of regional water. government performance on rational water consumption and effective water conservation at their administrative regions are examined every year. International conference on water resources assessment and seasonal prediction

The hydrometric network development in China
After decades of development, a comprehensive hydrometric network has been established in the country, which provides basis for water management. In total, there are 93,617 different kinds of monitoring stations across the country.

Hydrological monitoring stations in China
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Distribution of hydrological monitoring stations in China
(1) Surface water monitoring The average density of national hydrological stations is 1,966 km 2 /site, which provide full coverage of major river basins all over the country. With the data collected, hydrological characteristics & water resources conditions of river basins can be evaluated.
International conference on water resources assessment and seasonal prediction  Where, there are about 1,700 forecast sections (for flood & water regulation) in the country, distributed on the major river stems and large tributary control sections.

monitoring for natural water cycle
However, the existing network was mainly developed for better understanding the hydrological regime of catchments. It cannot satisfy the intensified demand of water management policy at administrative divisions. Therefore, we carried out monitoring network planning on interprovincial boundary rivers, the principles are:  major river stems and their first tributaries,  rivers whose catchment areas greater than 1000 km 2 ,  key interprovincial water transfer project or interbasin water diversion project channels,  water vulnerable areas or serious pollution areas of the interprovincial boundary water bodies.
Based on above principle, a total number of 841 monitoring stations are planned on interprovincial boundary water sections. International conference on water resources assessment and seasonal prediction Analysis shows that, in the planning, there are 367 interprovincial boundary rivers whose drainage areas are above 1000 km 2 . where, monitoring stations for 333 tranboundary rivers at their provincial administrative sections are deployed, accounting for 91% of the total 367 rivers. with the planning monitoring capacity, an average 88% of total inflow and outflow for provincial administrative waters can be effectively monitored. taking into account the work of water survey for un-gauged areas, the planning can meet the increasing needs of regional water management for provincial administrative divisions.

Monitoring for water utilizations
In comparison with natural water cycle monitoring, monitoring for water utilization is relatively weak. Currently, statistic method such as water consumption quotas is still widely used. And about 30% of industrial and 70% of agricultural water have not yet been directly measured.
International conference on water resources assessment and seasonal prediction Based on such circumstance, monitoring of water consumptions are strengthened by focusing on important users in following principle: centralized public and industrial users with annual surface water consumptions above 300 million m 3 licensed public and industrial users with annual groundwater consumptions above 50 million m 3 users taken water from vulnerable and sensitive waterbodies for specific purpose