Effects of three biological control approaches and their combination on the restoration of eutrophicated waterbodies

Abstract

Choosing appropriate approaches is a key to successfully using biological control measures to accelerate the recovery of eutrophic waterbodies. In this study, we used three biomanipulation approaches—including introducing filter-feeding bivalves, stocking planktivorous fish, replanting submerged macrophytes—as well as an approach that combined all three of these methods in order to investigate their effects on water quality and plankton communities within simulation experiment systems. The experimental results showed that only stocking filter-feeding bivalves or fish could not significantly control the total algal biomass and water nutrient concentrations compared to those of the controls. The cladoceran biomasses were reduced under the treatments of stocking filter-feeding bivalves or fish. However, replanting macrophytes and a combined biological restoration approach could significantly reduce the algal biomass and the nutrient content, and both of these methods increased cladoceran biomass. The results of factor analysis of ten environmental parameters suggested that a combined biological restoration treatment was the most effective at controlling the algal biomass and reducing the nutrient content. In conclusion, combination of biological restoration measures was the best treatment out of the three treatments that were tested, and we suggest that more whole-lake scale experiments are needed. Additionally, designing a combined approach should not be a simple superposition of individual measures, but the measures should be complementary to each other.