Multi-pollutant assessment and solutions forclean water in Three Gorges Reservoir area in China

Background

The water quality in the Three Gorges Reservoir is facing a new challenge by multi-media pollutants under the background of manure replacing chemical fertilizers. Accordingly, controlling the migration of multi-pollutants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, fungicide, and antibiotic in the 'farmland-small watershed-reservoir area' is the key to water protection in the reservoir area. However, the transformation and migration of such multi-pollutants in soil and their interaction mechanism remain unclear yet. Furthermore, there is also an urgent need to establish the coordinated management of multi-pollutants based on environmental thresholds at the watershed. In this study, the integrated research approaches, including field experiments, simulation experiments, network monitoring, and multi-pollutants modeling will be used in the scales of the 'farmland-small watershed-reservoir area'

Objective

This project will focus on 1) quantifying the flux of multi-pollutants from the typical cropping systems to the surface water in the Three Gorges Reservoir area, 2) establishing antibiotics and fungicides model and applying GloWPa and MARINA model for simulating multi-pollutants hotspots and concentrations in the Three Gorges reservoir area 3) evaluating the potentials of manure replacement technologies and multi-pollutants control technologies; and designing the agriculture-livestock scenarios with low environmental costs in the Three gorges reservoir area by introducing pollutants emission reduction technologies and policies. This project will provide theoretical support to the agricultural green development in the Three Gorges reservoir area.

Method

This research utilizes meta-analysis (RQ1) for global surface water antibiotics and fungicides pollution comparison and driver identification. RQ2 focuses on Three gorges reservoir area, developing antibiotics models to locate hotspots. RQ3 integrates models to identify fungicide hotspots and assess land use contributions. RQ4 establishes environmental thresholds, evaluates manure replacement and multi-pollutant control tech, and designs agricultural-livestock scenarios for green development in the Three Gorges Reservoirs area.

(Expected) results

This research has three main innovative aspects. First, this will be the first study to analyze the reported antibiotics pollution in the water systems at the global scale and to identify the relationship between the pollution status and the human activity (RQ1).Second, antibiotic and fungicide models will be developed based on the GloWPa model. This will be the first study to apply the antibiotics and fungicides models in the TGRA to quantify the antibiotics and fungicides concentrations of the surface water (RQ2 & 3).Third, this will be the first study to evaluate the environmental impacts of multiple pollutants in water systems to support optimistic agricultural green development scenarios for clean water in the TGRA(RQ4).