Qi, Jihong2025-10-132025-10-132025https://hdl.handle.net/10566/21083Karst wetland as a special type of the inland wetland has significant ecological functions and associates socio-economic values. Huixian karst wetland located in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in the southwest of China providesthe irreplaceable goods and services for local development, as the focus of the study in this thesis. With the urbanization in terms of population growth and housing construction, however, Huixian wetland was kept in change in land use practices and increase in local use of water resources over time, especially in the past 40 years. The wetland suffers from shrinkage in size at an alarm rate and serious degradation of ecological functioning. It takes much negative effects on local residential livelihood and economic development. This thesis focuses on the core area of Huixian wetland as the study area aiming to assess its water utilization while maintaining the currently ecological health. Considering the complex hydrogeologic regimes of the wetland itself and the lack of historical monitoring data on hydrology locally, a methodology consisting of multimethods and techniques were reviewed and adapted at a macro scale of the problem, including field surveys, water balance, remote sensing (RS), geographic information system (GIS), ecological water requirement and numerical simulation. At the beginning of the study, the dedicated field geomorphological investigations for many times were carried out, which assisted for understanding of the relationship of each component and the water circulation paths of the study area and paved the way for the follow-up methods. The application of the RS and GIS were used to extract the spatial and temporal https://uwcscholar.uwc.ac.za/home 2 change of the hydrological regimes, land use and growth condition of aquatic vegetations over the study area during long-term period, which were used to patch up the absence of long-term monitoring data. Based on the analysis results, ecological water requirement of wetland was determined in terms of selected the indicator of the aquatic vegetation for limiting factor to control the water utilization, in order to avoid continued loss of the wetland function further more. And then, a hydrogeological conceptual model was built to simulate the groundwater flow regime. A zone of mobile groundwater divides within the wetland catchment between Lake Mudong and Fenshui Pond was conceptualized and verified as opposed to a postulated single fixed line of a watershed. The zone or belt of drifting divides occurred, whereas a crucial role of Lake Mudong it the belt formulation was analyzed. Based on this study, it was concluded that the impact of the supply water scenario of less than 20% withdrawal of groundwater recharge for meeting sustainable water utilization of local community was the acceptable margin of the fluctuation in order to maintain the current wetland integrity and health without getting further degradation.enKarst WetlandSustainable DevelopmentRemote SensingEcological Water Requirement For WetlandGeographic Information SystemsThesis