Pulses outweigh cumulative effects of water diversion from river to lake on lacustrine phytoplankton communities.

Due to the allochthonous input of nutrients and species, the cumulative effects of water diversion on water-receiving lakes deserve attention. Taking the water diversion project from the Yangtze River to Lake Taihu (WDYT) as an example, we explored the temporal effects of WDYT on the phytoplankton community and physicochemical habitat of Lake Taihu in autumn and winter from 2013 to 2018. Although the short-term diversion significantly increased the risk of importing nutrients, the relatively high quality of the diversion water compared with other inflow rivers had improved the water quality of the water-receiving lake region.

Lacustrine micro-ecosystem responses to the inflow discharge gradient of water diversion from Yangtze River to Lake Taihu.

Water diversion project is always taken as the emergency and effective engineering measure to deal with the cyanobacterial blooms in eutrophic lakes. The inflow discharge and duration are the critical parameters influencing the effects and costs of the water diversion activities. Due to the impacts of meteorological and hydrological factors such as precipitation and wind-wave currents, the environmental influence of water diversion on shallow eutrophic lakes is always unclear.