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Hou X, Hu X, Li Y, Zhang H, Niu L, Huang R, Xu J. From disruption to adaptation: Response of phytoplankton communities in representative impounded lakes to China's South-to-North Water Diversion Project. WATER RESEARCH 2024; 261:122001. [PMID: 38964215 DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2024.122001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2024] [Revised: 06/08/2024] [Accepted: 06/24/2024] [Indexed: 07/06/2024]
Abstract
Impounded lakes are often interconnected in large-scale water diversion projects to form a coordinated system for water allocation and regulation. The alternating runoff and transferred water can significantly impact local ecosystems, which are initially reflected in the sensitive phytoplankton. Nonetheless, limited information is available on the temporal dynamics and assembly patterns of phytoplankton community in impounded lakes responding to continuous and periodic water diversion. Herein, a long-term monitoring from 2013 to 2020 were conducted to systematically investigate the response of phytoplankton community, including its characteristics, stability, and the ecological processes governing community assembly, in representative impounded lakes to the South-to-North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP) in China. In the initial stage of the SNWDP, the phytoplankton diversity indices experienced a decrease during both non-water diversion periods (8.5 %∼21.2 %) and water diversion periods (5.6 %∼12.2 %), implying a disruption in the aquatic ecosystem. But the regular delivery of high-quality water from the Yangtze River gradually increased phytoplankton diversity and mediated ecological assembly processes shifting from stochastic to deterministic. Meanwhile, reduced nutrients restricted the growth of phytoplankton, pushing species to interact more closely to maintain the functionality and stability of the co-occurrence network. The partial least squares path model revealed that ecological process (path coefficient = 0.525, p < 0.01) and interspecies interactions in networks (path coefficient = -0.806, p < 0.01) jointly influenced the keystone and dominant species, ultimately resulting in an improvement in stability (path coefficient = 0.878, p < 0.01). Overall, the phytoplankton communities experienced an evolutionary process from short-term disruption to long-term adaptation, demonstrating resilience and adaptability in response to the challenges posed by the SNWDP. This study revealed the response and adaptation mechanism of phytoplankton communities in impounded lakes to water diversion projects, which is helpful for maintaining the lake ecological health and formulating rational water management strategies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xing Hou
- Key Laboratory of Integrated Regulation and Resource Development on Shallow Lakes, Ministry of Education, College of Environment, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, PR China; Institute of Water Science and Technology, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, PR China
| | - Xiaodong Hu
- Jiangsu Hydraulic Research Institute, Nanjing, 210017, PR China
| | - Yi Li
- Key Laboratory of Integrated Regulation and Resource Development on Shallow Lakes, Ministry of Education, College of Environment, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, PR China.
| | - Huanjun Zhang
- Key Laboratory of Integrated Regulation and Resource Development on Shallow Lakes, Ministry of Education, College of Environment, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, PR China
| | - Lihua Niu
- Key Laboratory of Integrated Regulation and Resource Development on Shallow Lakes, Ministry of Education, College of Environment, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, PR China.
| | - Rui Huang
- Jiangsu Hydraulic Research Institute, Nanjing, 210017, PR China
| | - Jixiong Xu
- Jiangsu Hydraulic Research Institute, Nanjing, 210017, PR China
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Jiang X, Liu Y, Zhou R, Sun T, Cao J, An S, Shen J, Leng X. Cascade dams altered taxonomic and functional composition of bacterioplankton community at the regional scale. Front Microbiol 2023; 14:1291464. [PMID: 37954247 PMCID: PMC10634544 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1291464] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/09/2023] [Accepted: 10/11/2023] [Indexed: 11/14/2023] Open
Abstract
Dams are increasingly disrupting natural river systems, yet studies investigating their impact on microbial communities at regional scale are limited. Given the indispensable role of bacterioplankton in aquatic ecosystems, 16S rRNA gene sequencing was performed to explore how these communities respond to dam-influenced environmental changes at the regional scale in the Shaying River Basin. Our findings revealed that cascade dams create distinct environments, shaping bacterioplankton communities near the dams differently from those in natural rivers. In the upstream of the cascade dams, water quality was superior, while bacterioplankton community structure was simple with weak community interactions. In the midstream, nutrient and heavy metal content were increased, making bacterioplankton structures more susceptible to environmental changes. In the downstream of the cascade dams, water quality had a significant impact on the community and the bacterioplankton structures were highly complex. Additionally, environmental variables significantly influenced bacterioplankton functional groups. However, the response to these factors, as well as the interplay between functional and taxonomic diversity, varied markedly depending on the specific region of the cascade dams. We here delved into the effects of cascade dams on the taxonomic diversity and functional groups of bacterioplankton to provide a theoretical basis for segmentally regulating these dams.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xufei Jiang
- School of Life Science and Institute of Wetland Ecology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
| | - Yan Liu
- School of Life Science and Institute of Wetland Ecology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
| | - Rixiu Zhou
- School of Life Science and Institute of Wetland Ecology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
| | - Tianyi Sun
- School of Life Science and Institute of Wetland Ecology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
| | - Jingdan Cao
- School of Life Science and Institute of Wetland Ecology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
| | - Shuqing An
- School of Life Science and Institute of Wetland Ecology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
| | - Jiachen Shen
- Key Laboratory for Information System of Mountainous Area and Protection of Ecological Environment of Guizhou Province, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, China
| | - Xin Leng
- School of Life Science and Institute of Wetland Ecology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
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Ma Y, Yu Z, Jia S, Wu N, Yin K, Wang Y, Giesy JP, Jin X. Multiple anthropogenic stressors influence the taxonomic and functional homogenization of macroinvertebrate communities on the mainstream of an urban-agricultural river in China. JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT 2023; 341:118017. [PMID: 37150169 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/29/2023] [Revised: 04/15/2023] [Accepted: 04/24/2023] [Indexed: 05/09/2023]
Abstract
Biodiversity loss is caused by intensive human activities and threatens human well-being. However, less is known about how the combined effects of multiple stressors on the diversity of internal (alpha diversity) and multidimensional (beta diversity) communities. Here, we conducted a long-term experiment to quantify the contribution of environmental stressors (including water quality, land use, climate factors, and hydrological regimes) to macroinvertebrate communities alpha and beta diversity in the mainstream of the Songhua River, the third largest river in China, from 2012 to 2019. Our results demonstrated that the alpha and beta diversity indices showed a decline during the study period, with the dissimilarity in community composition between sites decreasing significantly, especially in the impacted river sections (upper and midstream). Despite overall improvement in water quality after management intervention, multiple human-caused stressors still have led to biotic homogenization of macroinvertebrate communities in terms of both taxonomic and functional diversities in the past decade. Our study revealed the increased human land use explained an important portion of the variation of diversities, further indirectly promoting biotic homogenization by changing the physical and chemical factors of water quality, ultimately altering assemblage ecological processes. Furthermore, the facets of diversity have distinct response mechanisms to stressors, providing complementary information from the perspective of taxonomy and function to better reflect the ecological changes of communities. Environmental filtering determined taxonomic beta diversity, and functional beta diversity was driven by the joint efforts of stressors and spatial processes. Finally, we proposed that traditional water quality monitoring alone cannot fully reveal the status of river ecological environment protection, and more importantly, we should explore the continuous changes in biodiversity over the long term. Meanwhile, our results also highlight timely control of nutrient input and unreasonable expansion of land use can better curb the ecological degradation of rivers and promote the healthy and sustainable development of floodplain ecosystems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yu Ma
- College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China; China National Environmental Monitoring Centre, Beijing, 100012, China
| | - Zongling Yu
- Ecological Environmental Monitoring Central Station of Heilongjiang Province, Harbin, 150056, China
| | - Shiqi Jia
- China National Environmental Monitoring Centre, Beijing, 100012, China
| | - Naicheng Wu
- Department of Geography and Spatial Information Techniques, NingboUniversity, Ningbo, 315211, China
| | - Kun Yin
- China National Environmental Monitoring Centre, Beijing, 100012, China
| | - Yeyao Wang
- China National Environmental Monitoring Centre, Beijing, 100012, China
| | - John P Giesy
- Department of Integrative Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48895, USA; Department of Veterinary Biomedical Sciences and Toxicology Centre, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N 5B3, Canada; Department of Environmental Sciences, Baylor University, Waco, TX, 76798-7266, USA
| | - Xiaowei Jin
- China National Environmental Monitoring Centre, Beijing, 100012, China.
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