| Title: | Prioritization of river restoration by coupling Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) models in the Taize River Basin, northern China |
| Authors: | Fan, J., M. Li, F. Guo, Z. Yan, X. Zheng, Y. Zhang, Z. Xu and F. Wu |
| Year: | 2018 |
| Journal: | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health |
| Volume (Issue): | 15(10) |
| Pages: | |
| Article ID: | 2090 |
| DOI: | 10.3390/ijerph15102090 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic and pollutant |
| Primary Application Category: | model and/or data interface |
| Secondary Application Category: | nutrient cycling/loss and transport |
| Watershed Description: | 13,900 km^2 Taizi River, located in the southern part of Liaoning Province in northeast China. |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | Identifying priority zones for river restoration is important for biodiversity conservation
and catchment management. However, limited data due to the difficulty of field collection has led
to research to better understand the ecological status within a catchment and develop a targeted
planning strategy for river restoration. To address this need, coupling hydrological and machine
learning models were constructed to identify priority zones for river restoration based on a dataset of
aquatic organisms (i.e., algae, macroinvertebrates, and fish) and physicochemical indicators that were
collected from 130 sites in September 2014 in the Taizi River, northern China. A process-based model
soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) was developed to model the temporal-spatial variations
in environmental indicators. A support vector machine (SVM) model was applied to explore the
relationships between aquatic organisms and environmental indicators. Biological indices among
different hydrological periods were simulated by coupling SWAT and SVM models. Results indicated
that aquatic biological indices and physicochemical indicators exhibited apparent temporal and
spatial patterns, and those patterns were more evident in the upper reaches compared to the lower
reaches. The ecological status of the Taizi River was better in the flood season than that in the
dry season. Priority zones were identified for different hydrological seasons by setting the target
values for ecological restoration based on biota organisms, and the results suggest that hydrological
conditions significantly influenced restoration prioritization over other environmental parameters.
Our approach could be applied in other seasonal river ecosystems to provide important preferences
for river restoration. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | aquatic organisms; SWAT; SVM; river restoration; hydrological periods |