Key Aquatic Environmental Factors Affecting Ecosystem Health of Streams in the Dianchi Lake Watershed, China

Abstract

Streams in a lake watershed are important landscape corridors which link the lake and terrestrial ecosystems. Therefore, the ecosystem health of streams is usually used to indicate aquatic biodiversity of the lake ecosystem, as well as being affected by aquatic environmental factors in response to changes in land use cover of the terrestrial ecosystem due to natural geographic characteristics of the watershed with the closure of ridge lines. This study was carried out at a shallow freshwater lake watershed in the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau of China, the Dianchi Lake watershed (DLW). Field survey of periphytic algal and macrozoobenthic biodiversity during July and August of 2009, as well as monthly monitoring of water temperature, pH, TSS, DO, TN, TP, NH3N, NO3N, CODMn, BOD, TOC, and the heavy metals Zn (II), Cd (II), Pb (II), Cu (II), and Cr (VI) from January to December 2009 was carried out in 29 streams flowing into Dianchi lake. Multivariate statistical techniques such as factor analysis and canonical correspondence analysis were applied to analyze the structure of the aquatic community in relation to aquatic environmental factors in order to provide controlling objectives for integrated watershed management and improvement of stream rehabilitation in the DLW. The results showed that the structure of the periphytic algal and macrozoobenthic communities were dominated by pollution-tolerant genera, namely the bacillariophytes Navicula and the annelids Tubificidae respectively, and TN, NH3N and TP were key aquatic environmental factors affecting the ecosystem health of streams in the DLW.