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Changes in the water environment and its major driving factors in Poyang Lake from 2016 to 2019, China

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Abstract

The hydrological exchange process between Poyang Lake (PYL), the largest freshwater lake in China, and the Yangtze River leads to drastic changes in water area (WA) and water level (WL), as well as apparent fluctuations in lake nutrients, algal organisms, and trophic level index. This study investigated the current status of the PYL water environment and the influence of hydrological changes on the nutrient status of the floodplain of the lake. Based on monthly measured data from six hydrological stations from 2016 to 2019, it was hypothesized that WA and WL were the key regulators of the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of lake water quality and algal growth, including water temperature, water clarity (Secchi depth [SD]), and nutrient levels. The results revealed that (1) the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of major nutrients in PYL were influenced by dynamic changes in hydrological characteristics (SD, total nitrogen [TN], and total phosphorus [TP]); (2) the eutrophication level in PYL has been in a steady state in recent years, while the central area has been more prone to the risk of eutrophication (e.g., the peak eutrophication index during Period 1 [January to April] in the water near the Duchang station reached 70); and (3) there were significant correlations among environmental variables, nutrients, and algal organisms, with different spatial and temporal distribution characteristics (p < 0.05), while the changes in WA and WL considerably influenced the water environment in the PYL.

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Data availability

The Sentinel-2 remote sensing images generated during and/or analyzed during the current study were derived from European Space Agency (ESA) (available at: https://code.earthengine.google.com/) (Yang et al. 2020). Joint Research Centre (JRC) Monthly Water History datasets were provided by https://global-surface-water.appspot.com/ (Prigent et al. 2012). Water level Offerred by Database for Hydrological Time Series of Inland Waters (DAHITI) (available at: http://dahiti.dgfi.tum.de/en/) (Schwatke et al. 2015). Sentinel-3 Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter (SRAL) altimetry satellite data was derived from European Space Agency (available at: https://code.earthengine.google.com/) (Jiang et al. 2020). ICESat-2 altimetry satellite data was downloaded from https://earthdata.nasa.gov/ (Yue et al. 2017). We would like to express our sincere thanks to all data supporters and websites. The local water environment data from 2016 to 2019 were obtained from the Yangtze River Basin Water Environment Monitoring Center, which were not publicly available due to Copyright but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

The research is supported by Visiting Researcher Fund Program of State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science (2020SWG01) and Youth Fund for Humanities and Social Science Research of the Ministry of Education (No. 20YJCZH207).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography and Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Wenyu Wang, Peng Yang & Shengqing Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430000, China

    Jun Xia

  3. Yangtze Valley Water Environment Monitoring Center, Wuhan, 430010, China

    Sheng Hu

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  1. Wenyu Wang
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  2. Peng Yang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by Sheng Hu, Jun Xia, and Shengqing Zhang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Wenyu Wang. Review and Editing was completed by Peng Yang. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Peng Yang.

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Highlights

1 Analysis of the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of major nutrients and algal organisms in Poyang Lake from 2016 to 2019.

2 The dynamic changes of trophic level indexes in different hydrological stations were assessed.

3 The correlation characteristics among water environment factors and key factors affecting water quality were explored.

4 The important effects of water area and water level on lake water quality were investigated.

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Wang, W., Yang, P., Xia, J. et al. Changes in the water environment and its major driving factors in Poyang Lake from 2016 to 2019, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 3182–3196 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22136-3

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