The impacts of socioeconomic development and climate change on long-term nutrient dynamics: A case study in Poyang Lake.

Abstract

The anthropogenic activities associated with rapid socioeconomic development affect global climate change and the water quality of lake ecosystems. However, the impacts of socioeconomic and climate changes on lake nutrient dynamics require additional study. In this study, we used a long-term dataset (1987-2021) of Poyang Lake to identify the nutrient dynamics and assess the impacts of social and climatic factors on nutrient concentrations. The filtering trajectory method (FTM) suggested that in Poyang Lake, nutrients first increased and then decreased, with TP reaching its highest value of 157 μg/L in 2015. The study employs a combination of structural equation modeling (SEM) and FTM to identify the complex interactions between socio-economic and climatic factors affecting nutrient concentrations in Poyang Lake. The SEM results revealed that socioeconomic factors rather than climate change determined the long-term changes in TN and TP. Additionally, FTM results verified that GDP, urbanization (Ur) and P-fertilizer (P_fer) were the key drivers of TN; Ur, population (P), and sewerage treatment rate (STR) were the primary factors of TP. Through generalized additive models (GAMs), we observed that GDP accounted for 86 % of the temporal variability in TN and 45.7 % of that in TP, exhibiting inverted U-shaped relationships with both TN and TP. Air temperature (AT), a climatic factor accounted for only 44.6 % and 14.8 % of the variation in TN and TP, respectively. In addition, P_fer explained 66.0 % of the variation in TN, and STR explained 50.4 % of the variation in TP with a peak TP at the STR threshold of approximately 80 %. Our findings highlight the importance of P_fer and STR as critical indicators for watershed nutrient management. The identification of key temporal drivers and nutrient trajectories provides a scientific basis for developing management strategies. The results highlight coordinated control strategies for water pollution and carbon reduction as essential measures for mitigating climate change.