Department of Water Resources Development & Management, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, 247667, Uttarakhand, India.
Environ Monit Assess. 2024 Jul 3;196(8):688. doi: 10.1007/s10661-024-12844-3.
Rivers are vital and complex natural systems that provide a wide range of ecosystem services. This study presents a methodology for assessing the riverine provisioning and supporting ecosystem services, whose applicability has been demonstrated over the Budhabalanga River Basin of India. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is used to generate streamflow time series at various ungauged sites, and then the streamflow is characterized for the evaluation of provisioning services. Further, the diversity and abundance of macroinvertebrates, along with the Lotic-invertebrate Index for Flow Evaluation (LIFE), is used to study the riverine supporting ecosystem services. The streams show intermittent behavior and strong seasonality for low flows, which limits the water availability, particularly during pre-monsoon season. The Baseflow Index (BFI) is greater than 0.6, indicating that groundwater contributes more than 60% of the total streamflow. Interestingly, despite the high BFI, the streams did not conform to the prevailing opinion that a greater baseflow contribution results in a later commencement of the low-flow period in the hydrological year. Furthermore, the study depicts significant variations in the diversity and abundance of the macroinvertebrates across the various sampling sites. However, the LIFE score across the sites remained consistent within a narrow range, i.e., 8 to 9, suggesting a steady supply of supporting ecosystem services. The results of the study can help the policymakers towards an informed decision making and the simplistic methodology proposed in this study can be replicated in other river basins for identifying vulnerable watersheds and prioritizing management actions.
河流是至关重要且复杂的自然系统，提供了广泛的生态系统服务。本研究提出了一种评估河流供应和支持生态系统服务的方法，该方法已在印度 Budhabalanga 河流域得到验证。使用土壤和水评估工具（SWAT）生成各个未测站点的流量时间序列，然后对流量进行特征描述，以评估供应服务。此外，还使用大型无脊椎动物的多样性和丰度以及用于评估水流的流动无脊椎动物指数（LIFE）来研究河流支持的生态系统服务。这些河流表现出间歇性行为和低流量的强季节性，这限制了水的可用性，特别是在旱季之前。基流指数（BFI）大于 0.6，表明地下水占总流量的 60%以上。有趣的是，尽管 BFI 较高，但这些河流并不符合普遍观点，即基流贡献越大，水文年内低流量期开始得越晚。此外，研究表明，不同采样点的大型无脊椎动物的多样性和丰度存在显著差异。然而，各站点的 LIFE 得分保持在狭窄范围内，即 8 到 9，表明支持生态系统服务的稳定供应。研究结果可以帮助决策者做出明智的决策，并且本研究中提出的简单方法可以在其他河流流域复制，以确定脆弱的流域并优先考虑管理措施。
