Identifying human activities causing water pollution based on microbial community sequencing and source classifier machine learning

Identifying and differentiating human activities is crucial for effectively preventing the threats posed by environmental pollution to aquatic ecosystems and human health. Machine learning (ML) is a powerful analytical tool for tracking human impacts on river ecosystems based on high-through datasets. This study employed an ML framework and 16S rRNA sequencing data to reveal microbial dynamics and trace human activities across China. The results revealed that the microbial assembly was mainly dominated by deterministic factors (environmental factors and interactions between species), and the metacommunity partition was significantly associated with human activities in both water and sediment (Chi-square test_w P = 1.93 × 10^-22; Chi-square test_s P = 6.00 × 10^-6). Human activities increased the vulnerability of interspecific occurrence networks and the influence of environmental factors on the OTUs similarity and phylogenetic distance. Combined of microbiological indices (MBIs), microbial relative abundance (MRA), and environmental and geographical indices (EGIs), the source classifier machine learning (SCML) algorithm was used to categorize five human activities (i.e., low human-impact, agricultural inputs, domestic inputs, industrial inputs, and dam construction). The SCML optimal configuration is (MBIs + MRA + EGIs) exhibited strong performance with Test_W R² of 0.882 and Test_S R² of 0.924. This study provides valuable insights for improving ecosystem management, supporting sustainable water resource management and advancing pollution mitigation efforts.