Abstract
The largest blue-green infrastructures in industrialized, urbanized and developed regions in China are often multiuse wetlands, located just outside growing urban centers. These areas have multiple development pressures while providing environmental, economic, and social benefits to the local and regional populations. Given the limited information available about the tradeoffs in ecosystem services with respect to competing wetland uses, wetland managers and provincial decision makers face challenges in regulating the use of these important landscapes. In the present study, measurements made by citizen scientists were used to support a comparative study of water quality and wetland functions in two large multiuse wetlands, comparing areas of natural wetland vegetation, tourism-based wetland management and wetland agriculture. The study sites, the Nansha and Tianfu wetlands, are located in two of the most urbanized areas of China: the lower Yangtze River and Pearl River catchments, respectively. Our results indicated that the capacity of wetlands to mitigate water quality is closely related to the quality of the surrounding waters and hydrological conditions. Agricultural areas in both wetlands provided the lowest sediment and nutrient retention. The results show that the delivery of supporting ecosystem services is strongly influenced by the location and use of the wetland. Furthermore, we show that citizen scientist-acquired data can provide fundamental information on quantifying these ecosystem services, providing needed information to wetland park managers and provincial wetland administrators.
Highlights
Blue-green infrastructure approaches have been adopted in many urban areas to combat climate change and environmental degradation (https://theconstructor.org/sustainability/blue-green-infrastructure/555236/,)
Based on the data gathered by citizen scientists in the Nansha and Tianfu wetlands, it was possible to identify different levels of ecosystem service provision between three land uses in these multiuse wetlands
Our results indicated that wetland water quality is closely related to the external water environment, with the water quality of the Tianfu wetland being much better than that of Nansha
Summary
Blue-green infrastructure approaches have been adopted in many urban areas to combat climate change and environmental degradation (https://theconstructor.org/sustainability/blue-green-infrastructure/555236/, (accessed on 3 August 2021)). Blue-green infrastructure is most often associated with a network of natural and semi-natural areas, offering environmental, economic, and social benefits to communities [1]. Since they have been shown to play an important role in maintaining water supply and water quality control, the value of blue-green infrastructure has gained greater attention in the last two decades [2]. Few studies have compared the relative benefits on water quality mitigation related to different wetland uses. Such information is needed to allow decision makers to create a more integrated wetland management policy
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