Riparian Aquatic Macrophytes in Relation to Water Quality in Urban Streams
Abstract
Urban streams or river channels have undergone severe human-caused alterations of different form in recent years especially within cities of developing countries with China as a representative. Facing increasingly serious pollution of these water bodies, public agencies of different level conduct more intensively protection and rehabilitation projects with multiple approaches to improve the water quality of urban streams for the ecological environment and the surrounding public health. Cultivation and placement of aquatic macrophytes in riparian zones present a popular rehabilitation approach in perspectives of both urban landscape and ecology. In this work, an urban riverine area within the city limits of Xuzhou, China as small part of the Huai River Basin is taken as our study site in the framework of a consulting project supported by the local public agency. Attentions are focused onto the six principal river channels and three important lakes within the most intensely populated zone of the urbanized area. Species diversity and abundance of riparian macrophytes including both artificial cultivated ones and wild-growing ones are observed along the riversides and lakesides by combining traditional measuring methods and the UAV aerial photography in order to obtain the plant morphological characteristics and the spatial distribution of different species. The aquatic macrophytes data are examined in relation to the hydrological parameters and several key water quality parameters with multivariate analyses including principal component analyses, correlation analyses and regression analyses. Comparisons are also made between the examinations based on observations in water and dry seasons. Final analyses results are integrated into GIS framework to create digital maps of the distribution of water quality indicators and riparian macrophytes indicators of species and richness.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMH032.0011S
- Keywords:
-
- 0478 Pollution: urban;
- regional and global;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0481 Restoration;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0496 Water quality;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1879 Watershed;
- HYDROLOGY