Colorado mountains
 

A long-term ecological study site for urban watershed in China

Poster Number: 
225
Presenter/Primary Author: 
Shen Yu
Co-Authors: 
Jinbo Gao
Co-Authors: 
Jun Ma
Co-Authors: 
Qian Wu
Co-Authors: 
Qingliang Li
Co-Authors: 
Peter Groffman

A long-term ecological study site for urban watershed is recently setup in Xiamen, China. The urban watershed is about 30 km in a range with coverage over 1000 km2 and consists of naturally forested reservoirs, agricultural land, developing towns, and estuary in land use type. The whole watershed is developing with an extreme intensity and becoming a new center of its district in the forthcoming 5 years. Six stations are equipped with autosamplers for surface water in the urban stream to monitor water chemistry biweekly and on rain events. Amount and chemistry of rainfall and temperature of surface water are recorded as well. The monitoring urban watershed is to understand urbanization effects on the stream chemistry, river processes, and ecosystem services. Rain event and landscape based urbanization effects will be addressed for stream environmental changes while an apportionment study are implemented in the watershed for nutrients, metals, and micropollutants. Nitrogen cycle, especially denitrification, is considered as a key ecosystem service to evaluate urbanization effects on stream ecosystem and processes. Biological diversity, such as microorganisms relating to nitrogen cycle, is involved in the urban watershed monitoring. A geographic comparative study is carrying out between the urban watershed and the Baltimore LTER site.

 
 
Background Photo by: Nicole Hansen - Jornada (JRN) LTER