Benefits evaluation of water resources used for ecosystem in Shiyang River basin of Gansu province

Among the numerous inland river basins in the arid northwest China, Shiyang River basin is known for its most serious water shortage that constrains its social and economic developments and for some of the worst eco-logical and environmental deterioration in China. The research on the value of water resources used for ecosystem is the basis for reasonable allocation of water resources between users of ecosystem and economic system. In this paper the concept of dynamic value for the ecosystem services is proposed. A modified coefficient for the ecosys-tem service value per unit area is proposed according to the cover degrees of biomes combined with expert consul-tation. Based on the developmental stage coefficient and scarcity of ecological resources, a dynamic evaluation method is proposed. The theoretical formula and simple calculation formula of the sharing benefits coefficient and benefits per unit ecological water utilization are proposed. The result shows that the benefit of unit ecological water utilization in the lower reach was greater than that in the upper reach in the Shiyang River basin.