Background Currently, there are differences in the types, intensities and hazards of soil erosion, the diversities and complexities of prevention and control tasks of soil erosion, and the imbalance of social and economic development in different administrative regions. It is difficult to measure the implementation of soil and water conservation work of local governments with a single soil and water conservation target responsibility indicator. Gansu province is one of the provinces with the most serious soil erosion. Therefore, establishing a soil and water conservation target responsibility assessment index system and assessment model composed of certain hierarchical indicators would help to accurately evaluate the level, science and integrity of soil and water conservation in Gansu province in terms of ecological environment construction.

Methods The analytic hierarchy process(AHP) was used to construct the judgment matrix, calculate the index evaluation weight (W), and the test index rationality (indicator consistency ratio C_R < 0.1). After the index test was passed, the entropy method was used to modify the weight of the index evaluation obtained by the AHP, and determine the revised comprehensive evaluation weight (P), as well as to establish the assessment index system and evaluation model of Gansu province.

Results Gansu province's soil and water conservation target responsibility assessment index system is constructed from the aspects of prevention and protection of soil erosion, comprehensive management, comprehensive supervision and accountability, the hierarchical structure consists of a target level (A), a criterion level (B_i), an operation level (C_j), and a sub-operation level (D_k). When establishing a water and soil conservation target responsibility assessment index evaluation model, the responsibility investigation is a negative impact indicator (2), and it is no need to give weights. The first-level indices are composed of three task indices, which are prevention and protection, comprehensive management and comprehensive supervision, whose comprehensive index evaluation weight is 0.400 0, 0.200 0, and 0.400 0, respectively. The rate of soil and water conservation schemes for production and construction projects is the largest (0.198 7) in the prevention and protection indicators of soil erosion, newly area of controlling water loss and soil erosion was the largest (0.120 0) in the comprehensive management indicators of soil erosion, supervision and law enforcement for development and construction projects is the largest (0.148 6) in the comprehensive supervision indicators of soil erosion. It focuses on the important indicators and direct indicators of the government's responsibility for soil erosion prevention and control.

Conculsions The model consists of 3 first-level indices, 9 second-level indices and 17 third-level indices in Gansu province. There are 4 indicators of >10%:the rate of soil and water conservation schemes for production and construction projects (C₃), protected area of key prevention region of soil erosion and water loss (C₁), supervision and law enforcement for development and construction projects (D₉) and newly area of controlling water loss and soil erosion (C₄), accounting for 61.80% of the total weight. It fully reflects the requirements of prevention first, protection priority, emphasis and scientific management, which may provide a reference for the assessment of the target responsibility of soil and water conservation in Gansu province and similar areas, and offer the basic data for the implementation examination of national soil and water conservation planning.