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Optimal estimates for dissolved and suspended particulate material fluxes in the Yangtze River, China

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Abstract

Accurate estimate of riverine material fluxes in dissolved and suspended particulate forms is a fundamental issue in monitoring water environments of large basins. Here we collected sub-daily observations of dissolved pollutants (NO3−-N, NH4+-N, and DOC) and daily data of suspended sediment (SS) at eight gauging stations with controlling areas varied from 694,700 to 1,705,400 km2 located in the Yangtze River basin of China, and selected optimal estimates for both dissolved and suspended particulate material fluxes from five time-averaging methods and two regression methods. The results showed that time-averaging methods generally performed better in estimating dissolved pollutants, while regression methods were more applicable for suspended particulate materials. Compared with the selected optimal methods, the conventional method generally overestimated material fluxes by 0.09–49.75% in most cases. Longer sampling interval and smaller controlling area often led to larger uncertainty in estimation and critical values of sampling interval and controlling area were generally found to be 10–20 days and 1.3 million km2 in the Yangtze River basin.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the valuable comments and suggestions of the journal editors and anonymous reviewers. The authors also thank the Bureau of Hydrology of Changjiang Water Resources Commission for providing the unique research dataset.

Availability of data and materials

All the data and materials in the manuscript are available upon request.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant number: 2016YFA0600901), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 52079094).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, School of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Tiantian Yang, Yao Yue, Yuhong Zeng & Xiaofeng Zhang

  2. Wexford, Ireland

    Lin Zhang

  3. Bureau of Hydrology, Changjiang Water Resources Commission, Wuhan, 430010, China

    Bao Qian

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  1. Tiantian Yang
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  2. Lin Zhang
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  3. Yao Yue
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  4. Bao Qian
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  5. Yuhong Zeng
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Contributions

T.T.Y., L.Z., and Y.Y. led the writing. Y.Y., Y.H.Z., and X.F.Z. designed the framework. T.T.Y. and B.Q. processed the data. T.T.Y. analyzed the data and visualized the results.

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Correspondence to Yao Yue or Yuhong Zeng.

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Responsible Editor: Xianliang Yi

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Yang, T., Zhang, L., Yue, Y. et al. Optimal estimates for dissolved and suspended particulate material fluxes in the Yangtze River, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 41337–41350 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13581-7

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