Abstract
Sedimentary records provide important information for understanding changes in the history of eutrophication in Lake Taihu. In addition, the catchment nutrient model SWAT provides a powerful tool to examine eutrophic changes in a long-term context. Since it is difficult to evaluate impacts of natural eutrophic development and anthropogenic changes in catchment discharge and land use, simulation of past changes provides a mirror on processes and dynamics. Boundaries in the simulations are set to a pre-industrial time to evaluate natural-agricultural nutrient changes in Taihu Basin a 100 years ago. Total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) in the main channel flowing into the lake are simulated in four sub-basins for 200 model years. Results show that modeling can capture basic features of basin nutrient development, where mean TN concentration (0.12 mg l−1) can be compared in broad scale to mean TN concentration (0.17 mg kg−1) from Lake Taihu sedimentary cores dating back about 100 years. Spatial nutrient simulations suggest that the two major nutrient sources are from the southwestern sub-basin (48% TN and 68% TP of the basin total) and the northwestern sub-basin (18% TN and 17% TP). There are differences of +7.3 × 104 kg TN and +2.0 × 105 kg TP between total input and output values, simulating mean annual amounts of nutrient deposited into the lake. TN and TP concentration differences between input and output sub-basins become smaller in the second 100 years than the first 100 years, suggesting a 100 year period to reach a balance of net nutrients. Catchment nutrient modeling provides a basis to evaluate how nutrient production and balance responded to environmental changes over 200 years in Taihu Basin.
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Acknowledgements
Financial support was provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. KZCX1-SW-12-1) and National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2002CB412301). We thank Jinfang Dai (Nanjing Institute of Geography & Limnology, CAS) for providing land use data, Haiyu Li (Department of Geography, Nanjing University) for assistance in DEM transforming, and Xuesheng Shi (Institute of Soil Sciences, CAS) for providing soil data. We thank Sumin Wang for constructive suggestions on the manuscript.
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Yu, G., Xue, B., Lai, G. et al. A 200-year historical modeling of catchment nutrient changes in Taihu basin, China. Hydrobiologia 581, 79–87 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-006-0514-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-006-0514-4