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Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management 2(3) (2014) 267--279 | DOI:10.5890/JEAM.2014.09.006

Mengjia Xu$^{1}$,$^{2}$, Shirong Wu$^{1}$, Fei Xu$^{3}$, Yanxia. Liu$^{1}$, Yanwei Zhao$^{1}$

$^{1}$ State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

$^{2}$ Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Nanjing, 210042, China

$^{3}$ Beijing Municipal Research Academy of Environmental Protection; National Engineering Research Center for Urban Environmental Pollution Control, Beijing 100037, China

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Abstract

Due to the impact of human activities, continuing degradation of lake ecosystems and loss of aquatic biodiversity, symptoms of ecosystem damages are widespread, and many efforts have been made in improving ecological conditions through diverse lake ecological restoration ways. However, agreement on what constitutes a successful restoration project continues to be lacking, and we need well-accepted criteria for judging ecological success. In this paper, detailed comparative lake health assessments using coupled lake models were conducted to judge ecological restoration effects of Baiyangdian Lake. We developed an approach to guide restoration of a degraded wetland through construction of two environmental models: hydrodynamics and water quality model as well as compartmental ecological models. Two ecological restoration scenarios- watershed water transfer and watershed pollution load control, were tested. Through correlation analysis and principal component analysis, 10 health evaluation indices were selected indexes from three aspects (structure, function and system) to construct health evaluation system of Baiyangdian Lake. Simulating and assessments results showed that watershed water transfer could improve ecological health status of Baiyangdian Lake more effectively comparedwith watershed pollution load control, and water quality of watershed water transfer is also an important influence factor on ecological health status. Watershed pollution load control is only has restoration effect on the water area near river entrance. For hydrodynamic index, water level in two watershed water transfer scenarios increased significantly, and water quality was also improved a lot. In watershed pollution load control scenario, water quality improved only in water area near river entrance. For water ecological index, zooplankton biomass in two watershed water transfer scenarios increased significantly and phytoplankton biomass increased slightly compared with that in benchmark scenario. Zooplankton biomass in watershed pollution load control scenarios increasednot much comparedwith that in benchmark scenario, and phytoplankton biomass had no obvious change, either. Aquatic plant biomass in all scenarios basically had the same variation. The proposed models and comparative lake health assessments we established show some promising applications as middle-scale or largescale lake management tools for ecological restoration such as pollution load control and ecological water transfer. These tools quantify the implications of proposed future water management decisions.

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