Review of River Basin Water Resource Management in China

Water resources are the basis for supporting the entire life system of the Earth. However, with the frequent global water crises—especially in the river basins of China—the issue of water resources has become a bottleneck that limits its development. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out relevant research. In this paper, we systematically analyzed different classification methods of the service functions of water ecosystems as well as factors that affect it. Results showed that climate, land cover, human activities, and their own endowment conditions were the main factors affecting the service functions of water ecosystems. Based on these, water resource management in China river basins was expounded from three aspects: water resources protection, allocation, and utilization. At the same time, the impacts of water resource management on land use in China were also summarized. Finally, the key trends of the next study were summarized as follows: improvement of the classification system of basin water ecosystem service functions, improvement of the mechanism of the basin water market; comprehensive tradeoff of water resource exploitation and protection in basins; and basin water resource management from the perspective of multidisciplinary crossing.