title: Combining citizen science and land use data to identify drivers of eutrophication in the Huangpu River system.
abstract: In recent years, the massive land use changes and urbanization of Shanghai City have coincided with a growing eutrophication and an overall degradation of Huangpu River, with related risks to the city's drinking water supply and economic development. However, there is only limited information to evaluate the spatial and temporal changes to the Huangpu River and its many tributaries. In the present study, 400 citizen scientists were trained to monitor water quality and environmental conditions on a monthly basis over three years in the lower (high urbanized) Huangpu River catchment. Their data were integrated with high resolution land cover data using GIS techniques to characterize water quality dynamics of the Huangpu River system with respect to main environmental drivers. Environmental driver analysis indicated that up-catchment conditions dominate river dynamics while typical urban impacts (first flush, impermeable land cover…) have only limited influence. According to these results, the city's investments to improve wastewater treatment and mitigate lower river impacts need to be extended throughout the catchment to reduce nutrient concentrations that are near or above thresholds for rivers and streams. The positive impact of in-stream vegetation pointed to the possibilities that local scale ecological remediation activities to reduce runoff could be viable approaches to improve river conditions throughout the catchment.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China. Electronic address: yczhang@niglas.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Yuchao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China.
authors.forename: Ronghua
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19 Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Minqi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China.
authors.forename: Juhua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19 Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19 Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Qichun
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liang
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D002947:Cities; D003256:Community Participation; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D005068:Eutrophication; D045483:Rivers; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis; D060753:Water Quality
chemical_list: D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical
keywords: Citizen scientists; FreshWater watch; HJ-1 CCD; Shanghai City; Urbanization