The Impacts of Spatiotemporal Landscape Changes on Water Quality in Shenzhen, China.

Zhenhuan Liu,Haiyan Yang

doi:10.3390/ijerph15051038

Abstract

The urban landscape in China has changed rapidly over the past four decades, which has led to various environmental consequences, such as water quality degradation at the regional scale. To improve water restoration strategies and policies, this study assessed the relationship between water quality and landscape change in Shenzhen, China, using panel regression analysis. The results show that decreases in natural and semi-natural landscape compositions have had significant negative effects on water quality. Landscape composition and configuration changes accounted for 39–58% of the variation in regional water quality degradation. Additionally, landscape fragmentation indices, such as patch density (PD) and the number of patches (NP), are important indicators of the drivers of water quality degradation. PD accounted for 2.03–5.44% of the variability in water quality, while NP accounted for −1.63% to −4.98% of the variability. These results indicate that reducing landscape fragmentation and enhancing natural landscape composition at the watershed scale are vital to improving regional water quality. The study findings suggest that urban landscape optimization is a promising strategy for mitigating urban water quality degradation, and the results can be used in policy making for the sustainable development of the hydrological environment in rapidly urbanizing areas.

Highlights

Water quality degradation is a key issue for global environmental change in urban areas and a serious problem in many rapidly urbanizing catchments in developing countries [1,2] where wastewater is continuously discharged to stream systems due to highly centralized socioeconomic development and anthropogenic processes [3]
Several recent studies have addressed the interactions between water quality degradation and landscape changes [6], with a focus on the selection of suitable landscape metrics, water quality parameters, scales, and statistical methods as they relate to water quality and the landscape [7]
The water quality statistics indicate that the mean values of the variables notably exceed the standard water quality level III in all instances and level V in some instances (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Water quality degradation is a key issue for global environmental change in urban areas and a serious problem in many rapidly urbanizing catchments in developing countries [1,2] where wastewater is continuously discharged to stream systems due to highly centralized socioeconomic development and anthropogenic processes [3]. Urbanization alters landscape patterns that, in turn, control the various biogeochemical and physical processes of watersheds [4] It is important for researchers of urban sustainability and river ecosystem restoration to understand the relationship between landscape change and water quality at the watershed scale. Simple statistical analysis at the watershed scale considers the effect of the spatial configuration of the landscape as an important factor in understanding the hydrological processes related to land use and water quality in adjacent aquatic systems [8,9].

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Discussion

Conclusion