Simulation and prediction of the development of coupled water resource-energy-food-ecology coordination degree in Dalad Banner

The synergistic regulation of Water-Energy-Food-Ecology(WEFE) system is a key path to realize sustainable development in ecologically fragile areas.This paper selected Dalad Banner, Ordos City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region,as the study area, and focused on its composite challenges of water resource shortage, energy transition pressure, salinization of arable land and ecological degradation, constructed a WEFE system evaluation index system, determines the weights of the indexes by using the entropy weight method, and combined the system dynamics model with the coupling degree of coordination model, to simulate the increase income and reduce expenditure, economic development, environmental protection, and coordinated development of the four scenarios of the system evolution trend from 2023 to 2035. The results showed that the coordinated development scenario had the highest coupling degree of coordination, which reaches 0.823 in 2035, and achieves synergies in multiple subsystems by balancing the indicators of water resources, energy, food, and ecology, such as increasing the effective utilization coefficient of irrigation water to 0.672, decreasing the energy consumption of 10000 yuan of industrial added value to 3.449 tons of standard coal per 10000 yuan, and increasing the volume of sand exchange to 8.227 million m ³ ; while the economic development scenario is characterized by overdependence on traditional energy sources, which leads toa decrease in energy consumption. The economic development scenario increases ecological pressure due to over-reliance on traditional energy sources, leading to an increase in industrial wastewater discharge to 48.905 million m ³ , the environmental protection scenario has significant ecological benefits but inhibits the potential for resource development, and the increase income and reduce expenditure scenario faces the problem of slow economic development. This study provided a theoretical basis and a practical paradigm for integrating resource development and ecological protection in arid and semi-arid resource-based regions.