Reconstruction and Trends of Total Phosphorus in Shallow Lakes in Eastern China in The Past Century

Bo Qin, Rong Wang (), Xiangdong Yang, Qinghui Zhang and Jianan Zheng
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Bo Qin: State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjin 210008, China
Rong Wang: State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjin 210008, China
Xiangdong Yang: State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjin 210008, China
Qinghui Zhang: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, China
Jianan Zheng: State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjin 210008, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 14, 1-15

Abstract: Lake eutrophication due to excessive nutrient enrichment by human activity is one of the most studied ecosystem regime shifts. The suddenness and irreparability of such eutrophication in shallow lakes cause substantial socio-economic losses, especially in fast-developing areas in eastern China. Although eutrophication has been well documented in many lakes, a regional assessment of the eutrophication process is still missing. Here, we provided a regional assessment of water phosphorus changes since 1900 in eutrophic lakes in eastern China using paleolimnological records and diatom-/chironomid-TP transfer functions. We collated the reconstructed water total phosphorus (TP) of ten lakes and reconstructed the other five records based on identified diatom compositions in sediment cores from previous papers. We found three trend types of decrease, increase and fluctuate in the fifteen TP reconstructions according to cluster analysis of the data correlation results. Increase is the dominated trend, in which TP changes are highly correlated. Among eight lakes with an increasing nutrient, the time-series TP data of six lakes fit step functions better than linear regression models, indicating the main non-linear change in lake nutrient levels over time. Our results show how integrating spatial information on a large scale from paleolimnological records highlights the eutrophication process and further benefits current lake management.

Keywords: eutrophication; total phosphorus; shallow lakes; transfer function; regime shift (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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