ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Improvement in municipal wastewater treatment alters lake nitrogen to phosphorus ratios in populated regions.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- High-resolution gridded dataset of sectoral water pollution discharges in China from 2007 to 2022.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Optimizing Small Water Bodies as a Nature-Based Solution for Mitigating Nitrogen Pollution.Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
- Advanced Technologies for Nitrogen Removal and Recovery from Municipal and Industrial Wastewater.Materials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- China's municipal wastewater policies enhanced seafood safety and offset health risks from atmospheric mercury emissions in the past four decades.Nature food · 2025Article
- Restoring small water bodies to improve lake and river water quality in China.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The Critical Role of Hydrological Distance in Shaping Nutrient Dynamics Along the Watershed-Lake Continuum.Earth's future · 2024Article
- Disparities in nitrogen and phosphorus management across time and space: a case study of the Chesapeake Bay using theEnvironmental research letters : ERL [Web site] · 2024Article
- Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from municipal wastewater treatment in China.Environmental science and ecotechnology · 2024Article
- An optimized crop-livestock system can achieve a safe and just planetary boundary for phosphorus at the sub-basin level in China.Nature food · 2024Article
- Important Role of Overland Flows and Tile Field Pathways in Nutrient Transport.Environmental science & technology · 2023Article
- Environmental sustainability opportunity and socio-economic cost analyses of phosphorus recovery from sewage sludge.Environmental science and ecotechnology · 2023Article
- Effects of Florfenicol onAntibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Significant decline of water pollution associated with inland fishery across China.Eco-Environment & Health · 2023Article
- Ecosystem-level effects of re-oligotrophication and N:P imbalances in rivers and estuaries on a global scale.Global change biology · 2023Review
- Diazotrophy modulates cyanobacteria stoichiometry through functional traits that determine bloom magnitude and toxin production.Limnology and oceanography · 2023Article
- Spatiotemporal Patterns in pCOInternational journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Sustained stoichiometric imbalance and its ecological consequences in a large oligotrophic lake.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Boosted ammonium production by single cobalt atom catalysts with high Faradic efficiencies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Deciphering the influence of multiple anthropogenic inputs on taxonomic and functional profiles of the microbial communities in Yitong River, Northeast China.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2022Article
- Accounting for interactions between Sustainable Development Goals is essential for water pollution control in China.Nature communications · 2022Article
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20 authors.
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Abstract
Large-scale and rapid improvement in wastewater treatment is common practice in developing countries, yet this influence on nutrient regimes in receiving waterbodies is rarely examined at broad spatial and temporal scales. Here, we present a study linking decadal nutrient monitoring data in lakes with the corresponding estimates of five major anthropogenic nutrient discharges in their surrounding watersheds over time. Within a continuous monitoring dataset covering the period 2008 to 2017, we find that due to different rates of change in TN and TP concentrations, 24 of 46 lakes, mostly located in China's populated regions, showed increasing TN/TP mass ratios; only 3 lakes showed a decrease. Quantitative relationships between in-lake nutrient concentrations (and their ratios) and anthropogenic nutrient discharges in the surrounding watersheds indicate that increase of lake TN/TP ratios is associated with the rapid improvement in municipal wastewater treatment. Due to the higher removal efficiency of TP compared with TN, TN/TP mass ratios in total municipal wastewater discharge have continued to increase from a median of 10.7 (95% confidence interval, 7.6 to 15.1) in 2008 to 17.7 (95% confidence interval, 13.2 to 27.2) in 2017. Improving municipal wastewater collection and treatment worldwide is an important target within the 17 sustainable development goals set by the United Nations. Given potential ecological impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem function of altered nutrient ratios in wastewater discharge, our results suggest that long-term strategies for domestic wastewater management should not merely focus on total reductions of nutrient discharges but also consider their stoichiometric balance.
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