RP1 Environmental Changes in Response to China's Economic Expansion
Thursday, 17 November 2005: 8:00 AM - 6:30 PM in Exhibit Hall

(AAA-1117-537554) Dynamics of Lake Ecosystem Health in Response to Economic Expansion in China.

Xu, FL¹, Hao, JY¹, ¹ College of environmental sciences, Peking University, Beijing, P. R. China

ABSTRACT- Since the late 1970s, reforming and opening policies in China have led to remarkable economic growth at an average annual GDP growth rate of approximate 8.3%. This rapid economic development, however, has come with an equally impressive increase in many environmental problems related to pollution and resource loss. Worsening lake ecosystem health is one of the most serious problems. This is evidenced in the trends of the lake physical, chemical, biological and ecosystem-service-function indicators. Decreasing water transparency, lowering water level, and decreasing lake area, etc, are typical lake physical problems. Eutrophication, acidification, and various pollutions caused by aggregate organics, heavy metals and POPs, etc, are emblematical lake chemicial problems. Algal bloom, macrophytes loss, species abundance and diversity decrease, and fish death, etc, are the representative phenomena in lake biological aspect in response to increasing stresses. In lake ecosystem-service-function aspect, some functions, e.g. primary contact recreation (bathing, diving), aesthetic enjoyment, natural flushing & dilution, drinking, aquiculture, transportation, etc, have been lost. Some causes should be responsible to this situation, such as, large amount input of chemical pollutants, over exploitation of lake water resource, and enormous decrease of riparian wetlands that were drained for farming purposes, etc.

Key words: Lake ecosystem health, Economic expansion, Anthropogenetic stress, China