Ecological engineering approaches to restoring the aquatic biological community of an urban pond ecosystem and its effects on water quality ‑ a case study of the urban Xixi National Wetland Park in China

Abstract

There is a global increase in urbanization, which contributes to the loss and fragmentation of urban wetland and pond habitats. Urban ponds have an important role in the ecology of urban areas, as they provide essential habitats for aquatic species. The objective of this study is to demonstrate ecological engineering approaches to restoring aquatic biological communities in an urban pond ecosystem, which can be used to achieve water purification of such ecosystems globally. The general approach of first cleaning out the ponds and then systematically applying different treatments of plants and fish was designed and implemented in the field. We used three replicated ponds per engineering treatment to determine which of the treatments was the best option based on an assessment of water quality and biological indicators. The main findings of this study were as follows: a combination of aquatic animals and aquatic plants can provide the best water purification performance; furthermore, macrobenthos, such as Bellamya purificata, can be used as biological indicator species for monitoring dominant species and water quality in a local urban pond ecosystem. In conclusion, maintaining biological species diversity over different trophic levels can provide the best water purification performance in urban pond ecosystems.

Analyzing the Worldwide Wetland Parks Research: A Spectral-Cluster Algorithm Latent Semantic Index Approach

“…Nevertheless, previous research findings have some shortcomings: Most scholars have mainly discussed these shortcomings from the perspective of a single discipline, namely, landscape, ecology, or sociology. First, from the perspective of landscape science, research mainly involves the current development and restoration of wetland parks [38], planning and design [35], plant configuration design [34], et cetera. Second, the sociological perspective includes research on wetland value [37], wetland healthcare [3], and the ecological education function of wetland parks [29].…”

“…The research on water resources in wetland parks is mainly focused on the quality [79], environment [80], and levels [81] of water. For example, Liu and Lu [38] studied the ecological engineering methods of restoring aquatic biological communities in the urban pond ecosystem and their impact on water quality in China's Xixi National Wetland Park. Scholars have also focused on the relationship between wetland park biology and soil, exploring the effects of soil pollution, et cetera.…”

For the Better Protection of Wetland Resources: Net Value of Ecosystem Services after Protective Development of Xixi Wetland in Hangzhou, China

“…The Xixi Wetland is located in the west of the main urban area of Hangzhou (Figure 1). It is a secondary wetland in a city where the ecosystem was severely damaged and the ES function was seriously degraded [25]. In 2003, before the implementation of the "West Lake Wetland Comprehensive Protection Project (Phase I)" in Hangzhou, the wetland area had decreased from a maximum of nearly 60 km 2 to only 10.08 km 2 .…”

PSR-BP Neural Network-Based Health Assessment of the Huangshui Plateau Urban Wetlands in China

“…People are gradually realizing the importance of wetlands in urban ecological security and ecosystem services. Different scales and types of wetland ecological restoration have been carried out (Asomani-Boateng, 2019), such as the ecological restoration of Xixi National Wetland Park (Liu and Lu, 2021) and the functional restoration of the Yellow River wetland ecosystem (Xia et al, 2006) in China. Traditional wetland health assessment methods mainly include grey clustering analysis (Zhou and Xu, 2006;Zhang et al, 2013;Zou et al, 2013;Jiao et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2018;Asare et al, 2021), comprehensive index analysis and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation analysis (Zhang et al, 2010;Zhang and Yang, 2012;Wu et al, 2015;Sutton-Grier and Sandifer, 2019;Fang et al, 2021).…”