# Hydropower Functional Zoning with Crowdsourced Geospatial Data: A Case Study in Sichuan Province
###### Abstract  
Hydro-electric development has received increasing attention due to its characteristics of ecological and environmental protection. In addition, aquatic ecological functional zoning plays a key role in the aquatic ecological management in the basin because of its ecological background and basic unit. However, hydropower function has seldom been considered in aquatic ecological functional zoning. This research proposes a framework for hydropower functional zoning on the aquatic-and-terrestrial-coupled ecosystem function with crowdsourced geospatial data and the spatial-clustering method. Sichuan Province was selected as the research area due to its critical hydroelectric position in China, and it is divided into 53 level 3 zones, 27 level 2 aquatic ecological functional zones, and 17 level 1 ecological functional zones. Focusing on the results of the hydropower functional zoning, the ecological-environmental problem of each zoning and the hydroelectric development in the future are discussed. The soil-erosion area in Sichuan Province did not overlap with the hydroelectric-construction-affected zones. Further, water pollution occurred in construction zones and core affected zones of the Fu River Basin and the Jialing River Basin. In the next 10 years, the middle and upper reaches of the trunk of the Ya-lung River will become key areas for hydropower-engineering projects. This research provides new insight into the development of various regional hydropower projects and the sustainable management of watersheds, which is helpful for the construction of new hydroelectric-energy development. hydroelectric development; aquatic eco-functional zoning; spatial clustering; watershed management +
Footnote †: journal: Applied Sciences  
activities in aquatic ecological functional zoning [6; 7; 8]. Meanwhile, aquatic ecological functional zoning could coordinate aquatic resources, the aquatic environment, and aquatic ecology [2], and it could achieve effective developments and the utilization of local resources. In China, several key basins, including the Liao River [9], the Songhua River [10], the Hai River [11; 12; 13], Chao Lake [2], and Dian Lake [14], have completed three-level zoning [2; 15; 16], but hydropower function was seldom considered in those studies. The research on eco-functional zoning from the perspective of hydropower functions is attractive and valuable. Hydroelectric development is one of the key methods to realize energy conservation and emission-reduction strategies, which can guarantee energy safety [17]. However, the process from the construction to the operation of hydropower engineering may trigger various ecological and environmental effects [18; 19; 20]. [PERSON] et al. [21] selected 16 factors that influenced river and bank ecologies in the Daqing Dam of the Jinjiang River Basin in Korea, and graded basins by enforcing an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based on the ecologies of small river basins and banks. Many studies have assessed the impact of hydroelectric development on river basins, such as the concentrated hydroelectric development in the Mekong River Basin [22] and the Amazon River Basin [23], with different biological and habitat indexes. In fact, the following indexes have been implemented: watershed runoff [24; 25], habitat pattern [26; 27; 28], biological source materials [29], vegetation indexes [30; 31], aquatic-population structure [28; 32; 33], and ecosystem services [19; 34]. However, none of the above references could demonstrate the ecological environmental impacts of hydroelectric development on the aquatic eco-functional zoning. Moreover, the data of indexes such as aquatic population and water quality are hard to acquire, which increases the difficulties of quantitative modeling of the ecological environment that influences large-scale hydroelectric development, as well as hydropower functional zoning.