Lake water quality observed after extreme rainfall events: implications for water quality affected by stormy runoff

Abstract

To investigate the effects of extreme rainfall events (EREs) on lake water quality, we analyzed the lake monthly monitoring data at the stations close to inflow rivers. We tested the hypothesis that the effects depend on rainfall magnitude, season, distance from the rivers, etc. The highest correlations with many water-quality indicators were obtained for the rainfall amount for the preceding 10 days before the water sampling days; i.e., negatively with Na+, Cl−, chlorophyll a (Chla), and COD, and positively with ortho-phosphate. We used the threshold of rainfall amount ≥ 140 mm to choose EREs and evaluate the water quality on such occasions because quite low values of Na+, Cl−, and Chla thresholds (≤ 25th percentile) were observed in some of the EREs. The event samples (group 1; G1) meeting the above thresholds probably represented the inflow waters during EREs (generally occurred in Oct–May), and the others (group 2; G2) indicated significant changes in the lakes (Jun to Sep), probably depending on the lake’s state of primary production. In the events of lower rainfall events (50 mm to 140 mm for 10 days), fast recoveries of algal production usually occurred even in Oct to May. The values of COD, total phosphorus, and ortho-phosphate in G1 were higher than the values of river water quality in the baseflow conditions, whereas both the G1 and baseflow values of nitrogen were nearly the same. The effects of ERFs on lake water quality from the viewpoints of tempo-longitudinal distributions, future monitoring, and climate change were discussed.