The self-organizing feature map (SOFM) and random forest (RF) method were integrated to recognize water quality patterns of nine water quality indicators for 63 lakes in China for 11 years (5110 data). The SOFM was built firstly to cluster lakes to identify the pollution conditions. Then, the RF was used to explore the good-offitness of water quality variables on the clustering result and to determine the important water quality indicators. The result of SOFM shows that the lakes can be clustered into three types. And the result of RF shows that permanganate index and chlorophyll a can determine the pollution condition when the classification accuracy is 80%. The integrated method can identify the water quality indicators reflecting the pollution conditions from complex data. In practice, the method can be used to determine the pollution conditions and direct the monitoring indicators.
Taking the climate of the Last Glacial Maximum (about 26000 years ago to 19000 years ago) as the background climate, the authors study the climatic impact of the expansion of the glacier on the Tibetan Plateau using the atmospheric general circulation model CAM4 coupled to the land surface model CLM4. The results show that in summer the increased glacier extent over Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has a significant impact on the climate in the Northern Hemisphere. Besides the significant temperature decrease on the glacier, atmospheric teleconnection can also cause significant warming near the Bering Strait. In addition, the disturbance caused by glaciers will enhance the South Asian summer monsoon and increase the precipitation there. Finally, through comparing the influence of the scale of the Qinghai-Tibetan glaciers on the climate under the different climate states of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and Pre-industrial (PI) periods, it was found that their influence in the PI period was significantly less than that in the LGM period. It indicates that impact of Tibetan glaciers on climate is related with the climate state.
To investigate the nonlinearity between recovery time of eutrophic lakes and the intensity of external load reduction, as well as the factors that could modify this time span, a quantitative analysis was conducted by model simulation. The authors employed a widely-applied phosphorous recycling model, and calculated the recovery time of a eutrophic lake to revert to clear state under different reduction rate. The parameters were set to different values to uncover how different attributes of the lake ecosystem could influence the recovery time. The model results showed that, there was a significant nonlinear relationship between load reduction and recovery time. When the external load reduced to slightly below the threshold, the recovery time would be longer than 40 years. Increasing reduction rate would result in significant decrease in recovery time, while its marginal effect became less significant. Lake type and morphology has significant influence on recovery time. Under the same reduction rate, recovery time of deeper lakes in colder regions is shorter; high sediment release rate requires longer recovery time; and longer hydraulic retention time leads to longer recovery time. Therefore, ecological remediation to reduce sediment release, or improve the hydro-dynamic conditions, may be effective. Moreover, this would both lower the threshold for clear phase, which lead to lower load reduction, and also shorten the recovery time, which made the remediation much easier.
The paper defined the concept of dual water carrying capacity based on water balance of different water quality and addressed a new method of determining forewarning classification according to timing of water shortage. A forewarning model of dual water carrying capacity was established based on system dynamics model. Taking the upstream of Niulanjiang watershed as a case study, the dual water carrying capacity was assessed and predicted by the model. Results show that under business as usual scenario, water resources of high quality will reach blue early warning and that of ordinary quality will reach yellow early warning. To meet the requirement of water diversion in the area, only low rate of socioeconomic development can be sustained in the area while environment protection measures has to be made at medium or above level.
A framework called Object-Oriented Precise Decision-making (OOPD) was proposed which oriented to the lake itself. The framework was based on Numerical Source Apportionment powered by 3-dimensional water quality model, which then quantified the causality of water quality improvement and load reduction. The proposed framework was applied to support short-term decision making of Lake Yilong, a eutrophic lake. Results showed that Chenghe sub-watershed and Chengbeihe sub-watershed were important pollution source no matter considering which monitoring station and under which water diversion scenario. In addition, comprehensive pollution control should be considered to ensure that Huzhong monitoring station or Hudong monitoring station meet water quality standards. However, considerable load reduction cannot guarantee water quality if there was no water diversion. Water quality of three monitoring stations would be improved a lot under 20 and 30 million m³ annual water diversion scenario. Finally, based on the analyses above, suggestion of focused pollution control project was given for each sub-watershed and an evaluation of one bean product wastewater treatment extension project was given to illustrate how to combine micro and macro aspects in OOPD.
Special attention has been paid to three types of processes, that is, source process, removal process and internal cycling. Through the summary of literatures, the mechanisms of typical cycling processes, such as sediment release and denitrification, were discussed. The comparison of contributions of different cycling processes was listed as well. Moreover, the main research approaches of experiment and modeling in this field were well summarized and compared, raising a general framework for the study of nutrients cycling in lakes. With the purpose of looking into the cycling of nutrients, different approaches should be combined together. For example, mechanism models and observation for the mass balance of nutrients, then the microcosmic experiments for the impact factors of cycling processes. It is an efficient way to explore the cycling of nutrients in lakes.