Abstract
Vegetation patterns on slopes strongly affect the water cycle processes in a basin, especially the water yield and confluence in arid areas. Quantifying and evaluating the effects of hydrological change on the migration and transformation of pollutants are challenging. Based on 4-year stream water quality data of 13 monitoring sites in the Huangshui River basin, a typical arid watershed of the Chinese Loess Plateau, the redundancy analysis (RDA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis tools were used to quantify its relationship with vegetation patterns. In the study, land use and the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) were used as a metric of vegetation patterns; accordingly, the 13 catchments were divided into three groups via the cluster analysis, including large (over 80%), medium (70 ~ 80%), and small (below 70%) proportion vegetation patterns (LVP, MVP, SVP). The results of the LVP group showed that vegetation patterns negatively affected the contamination of total phosphorus (TP), ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), permanganate index (CODMn), and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) in the stream water, and the contribution rates were − 0.57. While the proportion of urban area positively correlated with stream water quality in the groups of MVP and SVP, the contribution rates were 0.46 and 0.36, respectively. Moreover, the precipitation in the groups of MVP and SVP negatively correlated with pollutants (− 0.24 and − 0.26). Those results revealed the response of stream water quality to vegetation patterns on the slope with the consideration of precipitation, land use, and socio-economic factors for the regional water and land resource allocation. This study has important management implications for vegetation patterns on slope of fragile ecosystems in arid areas.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Project (Grant No. 2022YFC3201705), the National Science Fund Project (Grant No. 52130907), the Major Science and Technology Project of the Ministry of Water Resources of the People's Republic of China (SKS-2022033), and the Five Major Excellent Talent Programs of IWHR (Grant No. WR0199A012021).
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All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. JL, SL, BD, and YZ performed material preparation, data collection, and analysis. The first draft of the manuscript was written by TQ, JL, JC, WW, and SAA, and all authors commented on previous versions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Li, J., Liu, S., Chen, J. et al. Response of stream water quality to the vegetation patterns on arid slope: a case study of Huangshui River basin. Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 9167–9182 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31759-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31759-z