Sub-theme
1. Water-Human-Economy(Agriculture, Industry, City...)-Ecology Nexus under a Changing Environment
Topic
1-5. Water security assessment and risk management
Body
As one of the most important projects in China, Three Gorges Project Reservoir’s protection and restoration of the ecological environment is related to the water quality security of the national strategic freshwater resources and the ecological security of the Yangtze River basin. Since the implementation of the Subsequent Planing of Three Gorges Project, the ecological environment in the reservoir has been stable and is getting improved, as well as the ecological service functions are gradually enhanced, but the aquatic ecosystem still faces great risks and hidden dangers. Aiming at the beneficent cycle and sustainable utilization of the water ecosystem in the Three Gorges Reservoir, we carried out ecological environmental survey in important tributaries and main streams of the Three Gorges Reservoir in July, 2022. We compared and analyzed the data with the data from the past 20 years. We explored water ecological environmental risks that still exist, including large pollution load in the reservoir area, unstable water quality in the inflow tributaries, single ecosystem structure of the hydro-fluctuation zone, risks in water quality safety of rural water sources, unstable shorelines of partial reservoir, low regional resource carrying capacity and insufficient environmental capacity. Based on these issues and combined with the current situation of environment resources and social development in the target area, we have put forward some prevention countermeasures to improve the stability and sustainable development of the water ecosystem in the Three Gorges Reservoir, which include agricultural non-point source pollution control mechanism, construction of ecological grid in the barrier area, connection of key inflow and tributary habitats, improvement of water ecological monitoring station network system, and construction of land buffer. These measures will make the ecosystem in the Three Gorges Reservoir more stable and sustainable. Further, our study is conducted from the perspective of systemic integrity of the basin, which has received very little study to date and it will provide important support for the sustainable development of the Three Gorges Reservoir.