Scientific Reports (Dec 2023)

A continuation-dynamic constitution analysis approach based on digital stable marker tracing and study on simulation of ecological tidal water diversion

  • Mengya Xing,
  • Simin Qu,
  • Hui Xu,
  • Peng Shi,
  • Xing Chen,
  • Feifei Ji,
  • Minton Liu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39611-7
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Abstract Water Diversion Projects have become increasingly popular in improving water quality in various water ecosystems. However, these projects also require a more comprehensive evaluation. In this study, we introduced a digital stable marker tracing module and proposed a continuation-dynamic constitution analysis approach. We applied this approach to analyze the ecological tidal water diversion in Changshu town, China. The results showed that the mean diversion water age of the Yangtze River water source was 10.80 h, the residence time of the background water source in Baimaotang was approximately 4.0 h, and the contribution of inflow water sources from tributaries accounted for 15% of discharges. The results can demonstrate practicality of our approach in quantitatively evaluating water diversion impacts and optimizing cooperative diversion projects. Furthermore, our discussion led to the design of an ecological tidal water diversion based on optimized cooperative diversion, which showed element-complementary and whole-comprehensive effects. This indicates that the ecological tidal water diversion can extend the impact of cooperative diversion. The continuation-dynamic constitution analysis approach enhances the tracing capacity of inflow constitution and enables the distinction of different time-varying distributions of each inflow constitution. Therefore, this approach holds promise as an embedded “Digital stable marker tracing” module in the model.