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The quantification of the influencing factors for spatial and temporal variations in surface water quality in recent ten years of the Huaihe River Basin, China

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Abstract

Temporal and spatial variations in river water quality and the factors influencing such variations are important basis and prerequisites for identifying pollution sources and improving river water environment. Monthly data for 22 indicators at 485 surface water quality (SWQ) monitoring sites (46,560 groups) in the Huaihe River Basin (HRB) from 2011 to 2018 were analyzed. This paper assessed temporal and spatial changes in SWQ in the HRB and identified the main factors influencing the changes and each factor’s contribution to the changes. The five-day biological oxygen demand, permanganate index, fluoride, ammonium nitrogen, and total phosphorus were the main pollutants. Spatial cluster analysis indicated that the HRB could be divided by SWQ into areas I–IV from light to heavy pollution. Areas I and IV were nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients pollution, and areas II and III were heavy metals and organic pollution. Area IV (poor SWQ) locates mainly north of the Huaihe mainstream with annual average rainfall ≤ 640 mm. SWQ in the HRB has been improving for two decades, with an inflection point in 2015 between 2011 and 2018, and rainfall change is an important factor for the inflection point. The urbanization rate, industrial water consumption, and rainfall were the key factors influencing SWQ changes in the watershed with significant hydrological zonation, with urbanization rate and rainfall increased, industrial water consumption decreased, the SWQ was gradually improved. The key factors contributing to SWQ changes in the future will be the sewage treatment rate and rainfall changes caused by natural variations.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Huaihe Valley Ecology and Environment Administration, Ministry of Ecology and Environment for providing water quality monitoring data in this article.

Funding

This work was supported by the Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment in China (No.2017ZX07602-003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Surficial Geochemistry, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Huifeng Li, Shuai Chen & Xiaohong Ruan

  2. School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Huifeng Li, Shuai Chen & Xiaohong Ruan

  3. Nanjing University Jinling College, Nanjing, 210089, China

    Tianhai Ma

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  1. Huifeng Li
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Contributions

Huifeng Li contributed to data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing–original draft, writing–review & editing. Shuai Chen contributed to methodology, validation, writing–review & editing. Tianhai Ma contributed to data curation, investigation, methodology, supervision, validation. Xiaohong Ruan contributed to conceptualization, data curation, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, supervision, validation.

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Correspondence to Xiaohong Ruan.

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Li, H., Chen, S., Ma, T. et al. The quantification of the influencing factors for spatial and temporal variations in surface water quality in recent ten years of the Huaihe River Basin, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 44490–44503 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-18282-9

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