Search

Understanding the relationships between land use patterns and water quality in low-order streams is useful for effective landscape planning to protect downstream water quality. A clear understanding of these relationships remains elusive due to the heterogeneity of land use patterns and scale effects. To better assess land use influences, we developed empirical models relating land use patterns to the water quality of low-order streams at different geomorphic regions across multi-scales in the Dongjiang River basin using multivariate statistical analyses. The land use pattern was quantified in terms of the composition, configuration and hydrological distance of land use types at the reach buffer, riparian corridor and catchment scales. Water was sampled under summer base flow at 56 low-order catchments, which were classified into two homogenous geomorphic groups. The results indicated that the water quality of low-order streams was most strongly affected by the configuration metrics of land use. Poorer water quality was associated with higher patch densities of cropland, orchards and grassland in the mountain catchments, whereas it was associated with a higher value for the largest patch index of urban land use in the plain catchments. The overall water quality variation was explained better by catchment scale than by riparian- or reach-scale land use, whereas the spatial scale over which land use influenced water quality also varied across specific water parameters and the geomorphic basis. Our study suggests that watershed management should adopt better landscape planning and multi-scale measures to improve water quality.

Knowledge of macroinvertebrate distributions and associated environmental drivers in subtropical Asian rivers is relatively scarce. To fill this knowledge gap, we examined the spatial variation of macroinvertebrate community structure and associated environmental conditions in a subtropical river system, the Dongjiang River Basin, in southeastern China. A total of 70 families and 9 classes of macroinvertebrates were identified from 74 sites sampled in January 2013. Our study has the following findings: (1) a distinct spatial differentiation of macroinvertebrate communities was present in the Dongjiang River Basin indicated by non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS), which corresponded to the northern region (NR), middle region (MR), and southern region (SR) gradient; (2) ANOVAs showed that diversity indices (total taxa, Margalef index and the Shannon diversity index), biotic indices (richness of EPT, percentage of EPT, and family biotic index) and most of the studied environmental conditions (elevation, slope, steam order, water temperature, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, pH, substrates, ammoniacal nitrogen, total phosphorus, percentage of urban land, percentage of rural land, and percentage of forest land) differed significantly among the three regions and a degradation gradient was observed in the NR–MR–SR direction; (3) Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) revealed that NR sites were characterized by steep slope and coarse substrate, MR sites were characterized by high water temperatures and shallow slopes, and SR sites were primarily characterized by high total phosphorus and ammoniacal nitrogen concentrations; and (4) the Indicator Species Analysis, in conjunction with CCA analysis indicated that the most representative indicator taxon is Tipulidae for NR, Semisulcospira sp. for MR, and Branchiura sp. for SR.