Long-term changes of water quality in aquaculture-dominated lakes as revealed by sediment geochemical records in Lake Taibai (Eastern China)

Abstract The rapid development and exploitation of the Yangtze River basin in order to ensure human food security and increase living space in recent decades has resulted in significant potential for degradation of water quality in the river and in hundreds of lakes. Understanding how lake environments have evolved to their present state under a variety of external influences is crucial for evaluating their current status and anticipating future scenarios of environmental changes. However, the lakes along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (MRY) are as yet little studied. Here, we described the long-term anthropogenic environmental transformations of a small lake (Lake Taibai) in the MRY area, based on a detailed quantitative geochemical analysis of the aliphatic hydrocarbons, nutrients (N and P), biogenic silica (BSi), and major and trace elements present in a dated sediment core retrieved from the lake. Our data revealed that levels of short-chain n-alkanes, αβ-hopanes and the trace elements arsenic (As) and cadmium (Cd) were all low for the entire record in sediments prior to ca. 1970, reflecting unpolluted natural state of the lake. Pronounced anthropogenic effects began to appear in sediments deposited in the subsequent years ca. 1970–1990, during which the levels of all these components were elevated, most likely driven by input of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) containing chemical fertilizers, pesticides and diesel oil respectively. Since ca. 1990, changes of short-chain n-alkane levels in the sediment suggested the lake had undergone dramatic eutrophication in which existing anthropogenic stressors were exacerbated by technological advances that extended the use of chemical fertilizer into aquaculture. This pattern contrasted with an otherwise comparable lake in the lower Yangtze River basin, Lake Changdang, in which trace element and petroleum pollution were much more prominent due to dramatic urbanization and industrialization of the catchment.