Determining Critical Thresholds of Environmental Flow Restoration Based on Planktonic Index of Biotic Integrity (P−IBI): A Case Study in the Typical Tributaries of Poyang Lake

Zhuowei Wang, Wei Huang (), Dayu Zhu, Qi Huang, Leixiang Wu and Xingchen Liu
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Zhuowei Wang: State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China
Wei Huang: State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China
Dayu Zhu: State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China
Qi Huang: Key Laboratory of Poyang Lake Wetland and Watershed Research, Ministry of Education, Nanchang 330022, China
Leixiang Wu: State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China
Xingchen Liu: State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 20, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Hydropower construction and climate change have aggravated river hydrological changes, which have reduced the water flow regime in the Ruhe River Basin. The reduced flow of the river seriously affected the water supply of nearby residents and the operation of the river ecosystem. Therefore, in order to alleviate the contradiction between water use for hydropower facilities and environmental water use, the urgent need is to explore the ecological flow-threshold of rivers. This study took the Fuhe River Basin as the research object, and summarized the monitoring data of eight hydrological stations from recent decades. Based on this, we explored the response law of P−IBI and flow, a tool to quickly measure the health of the ecosystem. Through the response relationship between alterations in environmental factors of the river and phytoplankton index of biotic integrity (P−IBI), it was determined that environmental flow was the dominant influencing factor of P−IBI. According to P−IBI, the threshold of environmental discharge in the Fuhe River was limited to 273~826.8 m 3 /s. This study established a regulatory framework for the river flow of large rivers by constructing P−IBI and determining the critical thresholds of environmental flow by constraining the constitution. These results provide a theoretical basis for better planning and improvement of river ecosystem restoration and river utilization.

Keywords: Poyang Lake; environmental flow; hydrological mutation; Fuhe River Basin; planktonic index of biotic integrity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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