Unintended nutrient imbalance induced by wastewater effluent inputs to receiving water and its ecological consequences

Abstract

Eutrophication is the most widespread water quality issue globally. To date, most efforts to control eutrophication have focused on reductions of external nutrient inputs, yet importance of nutrient stoichiometry and subsequent shift in plankton composition in aquatic ecosystem has been largely neglected. To address eutrophication, improved sanitation is one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, spurring the constructions of wastewater treatment facilities that have improved water quality in many lakes and rivers. However, control measures are often targeted at and effective in removing a single nutrient from sewage and thus are less effective in removing the others, resulting in the changes of nutrient stoichiometry. In general, more effective phosphorus removal relative to nitrogen has occurred in wastewater treatment leading to substantial increases in N/P ratios in effluent relative to the influent. Unfortunately, high N/P ratios in receiving waters can impose negative influences on ecosystems. Thus, long-term strategies for domestic wastewater management should not merely focus on the total reduction of nutrient discharge but also consider their stoichiometric balances in receiving waters.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Nutrient stoichiometry / Wastewater treatment / Ecosystem functioning / Water quality management

References

[1] Carlson R E, Simpson J (1996). A Coordinator’s Guide to Volunteer Lake Monitoring Methods. Washington, DC: North American Lake Management Society, 96

[2] ElserJ J DevlinS P YuJ Baumann A ChurchM J DoreJ E HallR O HollarM JohnsonT Vick-MajorsT WhiteC (2022). 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, (in press)

[3] ElserJ J, FaganW, DennoR, DobberfuhlD, FolarinA, HubertyA, InterlandiS, KilhamS, McCauleyE, SchulzK, SiemannE, SternerR. (2000). Nutritional constraints in terrestrial and freshwater food webs. Nature, 408( 6812): 578– 580

[4] EuropeanEnvironment Agency (2018). European Waters: Assessment of Status and Pressures 2018. Copenhagen: European Environment Agency

[5] GuildfordS HeckyR ( 2000). Total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and nutrient limitation in lakes and oceans: Is there a common relationship? Limnology and Oceanography, 45( 6): 1213– 1223

[6] HellwegerF L, MartinR M, EigemannE, SmithD J, DickG J, WilhelmS W. (2022). Models predict planned phosphorus load reduction will make Lake Erie more toxic. Science, 376( 6596): 1001– 1005

[7] HuismanJ, CoddG A, PaerlH, IbelingsB, VerspagenJ H, VisserP M. (2018). Cyanobacterial blooms. Nature Reviews. Microbiology, 16( 8): 471– 483

[8] LoladzeI, ElserJ J. (2011). The origins of the redfield nitrogen-to-phosphorus ratio are in a homoeostatic protein-to-RNA ratio. Ecology Letters, 14( 3): 244– 250

[9] PeñuelasJ, JanssensI A, CiaisP, ObersteinerM, SardansJ. (2020). Anthropogenic global shifts in biospheric N and P concentrations and ratios and their impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem productivity, food security, and human health. Global Change Biology, 26( 4): 1962– 1985

[10] PeñuelasJ, SardansJ. (2022). The global nitrogen-phosphorus imbalance. Science, 375( 6578): 266– 267

[11] RiceJ, WesterhoffP. (2017). High levels of endocrine pollutants in US streams during low flow due to insufficient wastewater dilution. Nature Geoscience, 10( 8): 587– 591

[12] SternerR ElserJ (2002). Ecological Stoichiometry: The Biology of Elements from Molecules to the Biosphere. Princeton: Princeton University Press

[13] TongY, ZhangW, WangX, CoutureR M, LarssenT, ZhaoY, LiJ, LiangH, LiuX, BuX. . (2017). Decline in Chinese lake phosphorus concentration accompanied by shift in sources since 2006. Nature Geoscience, 10( 507): 507– 511

[14] TongY, WangM, PenuelasJ, LiuX, PaerlH W, ElserJ J, SardansJ, CoutureR M, LarssenT, HuH. . (2020). Improvement in municipal wastewater treatment alters lake nitrogen to phosphorus ratios in populated regions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117( 21): 11566– 11572

[15] Van de WaalD, SmithV H, DeclerckS A J, StamE, ElserJ J. (2014). Stoichiometric regulation of phytoplankton toxins. Ecology Letters, 17( 6): 736– 742

[16] WangZ ShaoD WesterhoffP ( 2017). Wastewater discharge impact on drinking water sources along the Yangtze River (China). Science of the Total Environment, 599−600: 1399− 1407

[17] YanZ, HanW, PeñuelasJ, SardansJ, ElserJ, DuE, ReichP, FangJ. (2016). Phosphorus accumulates faster than nitrogen globally in freshwater ecosystems under anthropogenic impacts. Ecology Letters, 19( 10): 1237– 1246

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 42122059 and 41977324) and the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (No. 20JCYBJC01080).

Open Access

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2022 The Author(s) 2020. This article is published with open access at link.springer.com and journal.hep.com.cn