This paper is a review of research works concerning the nutrient transportation,transformation and exchange between water, sediment and biota in the lakes from the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River conducted in the context of project entitled "The Processes and Mechanism of Lake Eutrophication in Middle and Lower Reaches of Yangtze River". All the lakes from this area are shallow lakes. According to the typical lake site research, the lakes from the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River have a higher baseline of nutrition in the history. Normally the trophic status of these lakes can be categorized into medium-trophic or eutrophic. Human activities have been enhanced during the last decades, which speed up the lake eutrophic process. Lake eutrophication control needs to reduce not only the external nutrient inputs from watershed but also the internal loading from the sediments. Investigations revealed that the lake sediments in this area are considerablly high in nutrition in which at most about 30% of phosphorus exists in the form of bio-available in the sediment. The surface sediment will exert great effects on the nutrient exchange between water-sediment interface via adsorption and release of nutrient. The nutrient release from the sediment in these shallow lakes is mainly in two ways, i.e. in the undisturbed condition the nutrient is released through diffusion created by the nutrient gradient from sediment to overlying water; whereas in disturbed condition, the nutrient release is determined by the hydrodynamic forcing intensity and the sediment resuspension. Metallic elements such as the iron, manganese and aluminium and the aerobic-anaerobic ambience will affect the release of nutrients. The disturbed release will increase the total nutrients in the water column significantly in the short period. At the beginning of sediment resuspension, the dissolved nutrient concentration will increase. This increase will be damped if the ferric oxide and aluminium are rich in sediment because of the ads
Forms of phosphorus in sediments from 25 lakes in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River were analyzed by the sequential extraction procedure. Contents and spatial distrubution of algal available phosphorus (AAP) in sediments of Lake Taihu, the third largest freshwater lake of China, were also studied. Relationships between phosphorus forms in sediment and macrophytes coverage in sample sites, as well as phosphorus forms in sediments and chlorophyal contents in lake water were discussed. Exchangeable form of phosphorus (Ex-P) in surface sediments was significantly positive correlative to total phosphorus (TP), dissolved total phosphorus (DTP) and soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) contents in the lake water. Bioavailable phosphorus (Bio-P) contents in sediments from macrophytes dominant sites were significantly lower than that in no macrophyte sites. In Lake Taihu, Ex-P content in top 3 cm sediment was highest.However, content of ferric fraction phosphorus (Fe-P) was highest in 4-10 cm. Bioavalilble phosphorus (Bio-P) contents in surface sediments positively correlated to Chlorophyll a contents in water of Lake Taihu with significant difference. Therefore, contents of Bio-P and AAP could be acted as the indicators of risks of internal release of phosphorus in the shallow lakes. It was estimated that there were 268.6 ton AAP in top 1 cm sediments in Lake Taihu. Sediment suspension caused by strong wind-induced wave disturbance could carry plenty of AAP into water in large shallow lakes like Lake Taihu.
Based on field investigation of wave, sediment suspension and the changes in nutrient concentration of the water column in Lake Taihu, China, we proposed two release models to quantify nutrient release under static and dynamic conditions, respectively. Under static conditions, nutrient release from sediments to the overlying water mainly depends on chemical diffusion induced by concentration gradient, in which the nutrient release is controlled by the temperature, dissolved oxygen concentration in the sediment-water interface, oxidation-reduction potential and the concentration difference between porewater and overlying water. Under dynamic condition (or disturbed condition),both dissolved and particulate nutrients in sediments are released into the water column because of wind-induced sediment suspension. The amount of nutrient release under dynamic conditions is larger than that under the static condition. The release of dissolved nutrients, however, does not increase because the wind induced turbulence made oxidation of metallic elements such as Fe (ferric iron), Mn which are capable of precipitating soluble reactive phosphate (SRP). Under dynamic conditions, therefore, the release of total phosphorus (TP) increases dramatically but the release of SRP is close to those under static conditions. In sediments of Lake Taihu, high Fe content leads to a high ratio of Fe to P contents in sediments (Fe:P ratio). Under dynamic conditions, therefore, nutrient release is controlled by the intensity of disturbance, sediment consolidation and nutrient content in sediments.As for dissolved nutrients, especially SRP, the release is also controlled by the intensity of dynamic re-oxidation, Fe content in sediments and nutrient concentration gradient between porewater and overlying water. Based on these two release modes, the release flux in Lake Taihu has been estimated. In the static condition (i.e. laboratory experimental condition), total release of NH4+-N for whole lake is ca. 10,000 ton/a, and PO43--P is ca. 900 ton/a. In
QIN Boqiang, ZHU Guangwei, ZHANG Lu, LUO Liancong, GAO Guang & GU Binhe Nanjing Institute of Geography & Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
A review about lake naturally eutrophi- cating, the internal loading of nutrients from lake sediment as well as the mechanism of algal blooms and the control practices was made, especially the eutrophication problem of shallow lakes since sev- enty percent of fresh water lakes in China are shallow lakes. It was found that shallow lakes are apt toward eutrophication than deep lakes. Without any influ- ences of human activity, shallow lakes in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River are still easily eutrophicated, which may be owing to the effects of flood in this area. In shallow lakes, sediments are frequently disturbed by wind-wave and resuspended, which result in huge nutrients release to overlying water. This may be the major reason for higher in- ternal loading of nutrients in shallow lakes than in deep lakes. Algal bloom is an extreme response of lake ecosystem to the eutrophication. Appearance of algal blooms is related to physical condition of lakes, such as underwater radiation (or transparency), temperature, and hydrodynamic conditions, or related to geochemical conditions of lakes, like concentra- tions of nutrients and ratio of nitrogen to phosphorus, as well as the physiological advantage of cyanobac- teria such as vacuole for moving towards the radiant energy-rich zone and the mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs) for resisting the harm of ultraviolet ra- diation. In shallow lakes, these advantages of cyanobacteria are favorable in the competition than in deep lakes. Also being the shallowness, it is more difficult to reduce nutrient loading and to control algae blooms in shallow lakes. For the control of eutrophi- cation, people should follow the sequence from pollution sources control, ecological restoration tocatchment management. To control the internal nu- trient release, physical, chemical, biological tech- niques, and even bionic techniques could be selected. The idea of ecological restoration for a eutrophic lake is to shift the ecosystem from phytoplankton-domi- nant state to macrophyte-
A limnological study was carried out to determine the responses of superoxide dismutase (SOD) activities and soluble protein (SP) contents of 11 common aquatic plants to eutrophication stress. Field investigation in 12 lakes in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River was carried out from March to September 2004. Our results indicated that non-submersed (emergent and floating-leafed) plants and submersed plants showed different responses to eutrophication stress. Both SOD activities of the nonsubmersed and submersed plants were negatively correlated with their SP contents(P < 0.000 1). SP contents of non-submersed plants were significantly correlated with all nitrogen variables in the water(P < 0.05), whereas SP contents of submersed plants were only significantly correlated with carbon variables as well as ammonium and Secchi depth (SD) in water (P < 0.05). Only SOD activities of submersed plants were decreased with decline of SD in water (P < 0.001). Our results indicate that the decline of SOD activities of submersed plants were mainly caused by light limitation, this showed a coincidence with the decline of macrophytes in eutrophic lakes, which might imply that the antioxidant system of the submersed plants were impaired under eutrophication stress.
