Study on evaluation index system for ecological effect of water conservancy projects

With the transformation from traditional water conservancy to ecological water conservancy, functions of water conservancy projects have been changed. In addition to meeting the demand of social economy development, the protection and improvement of eco-environment should be taken into account. As the link between water use for human activities and natural water cycle, it is necessary to research on the ecological effect of water conservancy projects. From the perspective of whether to be affected by human activities, ecological effect is divided into natural ecological effect and social ecological effect, a framework of comprehensive evaluation index system for ecological effect is preliminarily constructed. The concept of ecological effect of water conservancy projects is analysed, and three-level ecological effects of water conservancy projects are presented. The three-level evaluation index system for ecological effect of water conservancy projects is built based on the hydrological regime analysis. The quantitative evaluation can be achieved. The method is applied to evaluate the ecological effect of large-scale water conservancy projects in the Weihe River Basin. The results show that the index system is of high applicability, which provides scientific basis for the quantitative evaluation for ecological effect of water conservancy projects and offers a better support to healthy development of river ecosystems.