Abstract
Regionalization exerts an important guiding role for sound environmental management, regional development, and schemes toward regionalizing ecological function, involving multiple levels. This paper formulated a framework for a detailed regionalization approach using the Ashi River watershed, China, as case study. Human activities, especially agriculture non-point source pollution (ANPS) and social factors, were identified as main factors. The results indicated that (1) the export coefficient model (ECM) can be used to determine ANPS loads in the watershed as well as total nitrogen and total phosphorus loads. (2) The minimum cumulative resistance model (MCR) showed that the middle and lower reaches had high risk for ANPS occurrence. (3) Based on the identified key factors, the watershed was divided into level IV and combined with existing level III using cluster analysis. Corresponding management countermeasures were proposed. This provides a scientific basis for pollution control planning and for management measures.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the support provided by the National Key Research and Development Program of China and Heilongjiang Province Applied Technology Research and Development Program. We thank providing of the data by relevant government departments. We also appreciate the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, which helped to improve the quality of this paper greatly.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Project No. 2016YFC0401105), Heilongjiang Province Applied Technology Research and Development Program (Project No. GA20C014), and the State Key Lab of Urban Water Resource and Environment (Harbin Institute of Technology) (No. 2018DX08).
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Xiaomeng Guo: methodology, data curation, writing—original draft preparation.
Vitus Tankpa: writing—reviewing and editing.
Li Wang: supervision, conceptualization.
Fang Ma: supervision.
Yujiang Wang: editing.
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Guo, X., Tankpa, V., Wang, L. et al. Framework of multi-level regionalization schemes based on non-point source pollution to advance the environmental management of small watersheds. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 31122–31137 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12000-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12000-7