Impacts of Landscapes on Water Quality in A Typical Headwater Catchment, Southeastern China

Kaiyan Zhao, Huawu Wu, Wen Chen, Wei Sun, Haixia Zhang, Weili Duan, Wenjun Chen and Bin He
Additional contact information
Kaiyan Zhao: Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Huawu Wu: Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Wen Chen: Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Wei Sun: Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Haixia Zhang: Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Weili Duan: State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China
Wenjun Chen: School of Software Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, 99 Hongjing Road, Nanjing 211169, China
Bin He: Guangdong Key Laboratory of Integrated Agro-environmental Pollution Control and Management, Guangdong Institute of Eco-Environmental Science and Technology, Guangzhou 510650, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-18

Abstract: The relationship between land landscape and water quality has been a hot topic, especially for researchers in headwater catchment, because of drinking water safety and ecological protection. In this study, Lita Watershed, a typical headwater catchment of Southeast China, was selected as the study area. During 2015 and 2016, water samples were collected from 18 sampling points every month, and 19 water quality parameters were tested such as nutrients and heavy metals. Through multistatistics analysis, the results show that the most sensitive water quality parameters are Cr, NO 3 , NO 2 , and COD. The type and scale of water body have direct effects on water quality, while the land-use patterns in the surrounding areas have an indirect impact on the concentration and migration of pollutants. This effect is sensitive to seasonal change because heavy metals are mainly from atmospheric deposition, but nutrients are mainly from agricultural nonpoint source pollution. According to the results, increasing the proportion of forest land and paddy field is effective to the reduction of water nutrients. Besides, balancing the configuration of water bodies, especially increasing the capacity of the pond, can significantly alleviate the water pollution in the dry season. This study is useful to provide policy suggestion for refined watershed management and water source planning basing on seasons and pollution sources.

Keywords: water quality; landscape; multistatistics analysis; headwater catchment; southeastern China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/721/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/721/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:2:p:721-:d:310563

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().