When using the GIS to construct a watershed ecological evaluation tool, it is of great significance to evaluate the watershed ecological constraints on the development of the hydropower, serving as a reference for the hydropower cascade development. The present paper summarizes the concept model of the ecological constraint assessment. It is shown that the basic indexes for the evaluation of the ecological constraints include three aspects, namely, the environmental status constraint, the species diversity constraint, and the environmental sensitive area constraint. With a process combined analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the GIS, an integrated assessment method for the ecological constraints is proposed. Taking one basin in southwestern China as a sample case, it is shown that the method of the ecological evaluation of the hydropower development based on the GIS proposed in this paper can objectively reflect the spatial condition and the diversity of the ecological constraints on the hydropower development, which allows for a simple and easy operation, and can provide a scientific basis and support for the comprehensive hydropower cascade development in the study area.

geographic information systems  /  watershed hydropower development  /  ecological constraints  /  evaluation index system  /  computation method