Liu Qi, Yin Senlu, Yi Yujun
School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Environ Sci Ecotechnol. 2024 Jul 7;22:100451. doi: 10.1016/j.ese.2024.100451. eCollection 2024 Nov.
Intensive ecological interventions have been carried out in highly polluted shallow lakes to improve their environments and restore their ecosystems. However, certain treatments, such as dredging polluted sediment and stocking fish, can impact the aquatic communities, including benthos and fishes. These impacts can alter the composition and characteristics of aquatic communities, which makes community-based ecological assessments challenging. Here we develop a bacteria-based index of biotic integrity (IBI) that can clearly indicate the restoration of aquatic ecosystems with minimal artificial interventions. We applied this method to a restored shallow lake during 3-year intensive ecological interventions. The interventions reduced nutrients and heavy metals by 27.1% and 16.7% in the sediment, while the total organic carbon (TOC) increased by 8.0% due to the proliferation of macrophytes. Additionally, the abundance of sulfur-related metabolic pathways decreased by 10.5% as the responses to improved ecosystem. The score of bacteria-based IBI, which is calculated based on the diversity, composition, and function of benthic bacterial communities, increased from 0.62 in 2018 to 0.81 in 2021. Our study not only provides an applicable method for aquatic ecological assessment under intensive artificial interventions but also extends the application of IBI to complex application scenarios, such as ecosystems with significantly different aquatic communities and comparisons between different basins.
在污染严重的浅水湖泊中已开展了强化生态干预措施，以改善其环境并恢复其生态系统。然而，某些处理方式，如疏浚污染沉积物和投放鱼类，会对包括底栖生物和鱼类在内的水生群落产生影响。这些影响会改变水生群落的组成和特征，这使得基于群落的生态评估具有挑战性。在此，我们开发了一种基于细菌的生物完整性指数（IBI），它能够以最少的人工干预清晰地指示水生生态系统的恢复情况。我们在一个经过3年强化生态干预的恢复型浅水湖泊中应用了这种方法。干预措施使沉积物中的营养物质和重金属含量分别降低了27.1%和16.7%，而由于大型植物的增殖，总有机碳（TOC）增加了8.0%。此外，作为对生态系统改善的响应，与硫相关的代谢途径的丰度下降了10.5%。基于底栖细菌群落的多样性、组成和功能计算得出的基于细菌的IBI分数从2018年的0.62增加到了2021年的0.81。我们的研究不仅为强化人工干预下的水生生态评估提供了一种适用方法，还将IBI的应用扩展到了复杂的应用场景，如具有显著不同水生群落的生态系统以及不同流域之间的比较。
