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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Freshwater Science
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1524086
This article is part of the Research Topic Effects of Climate Change on Urban Streams in the Anthropocene: How Ready Are We to Tackle This Looming Danger? View all articles
A novel approach to integrating the stability of a river ecosystem and its driving factors
Provisionally accepted- School of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China
In recent years, river ecosystem stability has been increasingly threatened by human activities and climate change. Comprehensive quantification of river ecosystem stability and systematic analysis of its response to human activities and climate change are essential for effective conservation and management. Thus, this study proposed a novel quantitative approach to integrating the stability of river ecosystem and its driving factors. The Han River Basin in China was selected as the study area due to its distinctive climate characteristics and significant anthropogenic impact. Both external factors, including urbanization, dam construction, and precipitation, and internal factors, such as TP, DO, and EC, were considered as driving factors. The results revealed that compared to the upstream, resilience in the lower reaches decreased by 35.75% and the resistance decreased by 8.2%, suggesting that the stability decreased from upstream to downstream. Urbanization had the most significant negative impact on ecosystem stability, followed by precipitation and dam construction. Among the internal factors, TP, DO, and EC were the three main factors affecting ecosystem stability and the increases in these factors contributed positively to enhancing ecosystem stability. Based on these findings, targeted recommendations were proposed to protect and restore the river ecosystem stability, providing valuable insights for watershed management and conservation strategies.
Keywords: resilience, Resistance, Human Activities, precipitation, Aquatic Organisms
Received: 08 Nov 2024; Accepted: 12 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yue, Fang, Zhang, Wu and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Shanghong Zhang, School of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China
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