Development of Watershed-scale Landscape-water Quality Models

Studying quantitative relationships of landscape-water quality is a fundamental step to assess impact of non-point source pollutions. Many hydrological and water quality models with multifunctionality have been developed as useful tools to study several key mechanisms in developed countries. In landscape ecological studies, however, the empirical modeling approaches have been dominated with emphasis on the relationships between the landscape metrics and water quality; the commonly used metrics include the area percentage of different land-use types, indicators of topography and corridor, and so on. The main techniques for developing those models of landscapewater quality are statistical regression analysis based on a linear model. It is expected that the connection among the multi-scale mechanism models will be taken into account in future studies, and the generalized linear models may receive much more attention than ever before. It is also believed that using allometric scaling to link geometrical features of landscape, regulating capacities of natural ecosystems, and water quality may potentially provide a new way to study landscape-water quality in a more coherent, hierarchical setting.