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A new framework to evaluate ecosystem health: a case study in the Wei River basin, China

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Abstract

Due to the rapid growth of the population and the development of economies in the Guanzhong district, central China, the river ecosystem is gradually deteriorating, which makes it important to assess the aquatic ecosystem health and take measures to restore the damaged ecosystem. An index of catchment ecosystem health has been developed to assist large-scale management of watersheds by providing an integrated measure of ecosystem health, including aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem. Most researches focus on aquatic ecosystem or terrestrial ecosystem, but little research integrates both of them to assess the catchment ecosystem health. In this paper, we combine these two aspects into catchment ecosystem health. Ecosystem indicators derived from field samples and modeling are identified to integrate into ecosystem health. These included indicators of ecological landscape pattern (based on normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), vegetation cover, dominance index, Shannon’s diversity index, Shannon’s evenness index, and fragmentation index), hydrology regime (based on 33 hydrological parameters), physical form condition (based on substrate, habitat complexity, velocity/depth regimes, bank stability, channel alteration), water quality (based on electrical conductivity (Cond), dissolved oxygen (DO), NH3_N, total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), chemical oxygen demand–permanganate (CODMn)), and biological quality (based on fish abundance). The index of ecosystem health is applied in the Guanzhong district, and the ecosystem health was fair. The ecosystem health in the upstream to Linjiacun (U-L) and Linjiacun to Weijiabao (L-W) reaches was in good situation, while that in Weijiabao to Xianyang (W-X), Xianyang-Weijiabao (X-W), and Weijiabao to Tongguan (W-T) reaches was in fair situation. There is a trend that the ecosystem health in the upstream was better than that in the downstream. The ecosystem health assessment is expected to play a key role in future water and watershed management of the Wei River basin, or even the Yellow River basin.

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Acknowledgments

This study is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (51279005) and the Major Special S&T Project on Water Pollution Control and Management (2009ZX07012-002-003) of the Ministry of Environmental Projection of P. R. China. In addition, the authors would like to thank their colleagues at the Dalian Ocean University and Shaanxi Normal University for their help with the data analysis and the identification of the samples. The authors also appreciated the sampling team for their assistance with the field work and Mark Kennard (Griffith University) for commenting on a draft of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Wei Wu, Zongxue Xu & Songyan Yu

  2. School of Resources and Environment, University of Jinan, Jinan, 250022, China

    Wei Wu

  3. Key Laboratory of Water Cycle Relate Land Surface Processes, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Chesheng Zhan

  4. College of Fisheries and Life Science, Dalian Ocean University, Dalian, 116023, China

    Xuwang Yin

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  1. Wei Wu
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Correspondence to Zongxue Xu.

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Wu, W., Xu, Z., Zhan, C. et al. A new framework to evaluate ecosystem health: a case study in the Wei River basin, China. Environ Monit Assess 187, 460 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-015-4596-1

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