Objective This study investigates the response patterns and dominant climatic drivers of changes in dissolved nitrate (NO3-) and ammonium (NH4+) concentrations in subtropical natural reserve watershed streams under future “warming and wetting” climate conditions. It provides a scientific basis for watershed water environment risk management. Methods The climate hydrology and ecology research support system (CHESS), a distributed eco-hydrological model, was applied, coupled with climate projection data from three global climate models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) under four shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP). The dynamic variations of NO3- and NH4+ concentrations in the Niupanshi watershed, Yingde, Qingyuan, Guangdong Province, were simulated from 2023 to 2100. Single-factor control scenarios were established for the identification of dominant climatic drivers in NO3- and NH4+ concentration changes. Results The CHESS model demonstrated robust capability in simulating eco-hydrological processes in the Niupanshi watershed. For runoff simulation, the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and R² were 0.62 and 0.62, respectively, during the calibration period, and improved to 0.73 and 0.74, respectively, during the validation period. In future scenarios, NO3- concentrations in streams showed a significant decreasing trend across all SSP scenarios (p<0.001), declining from a historical average of 4.09 mg/L to a range of 2.40~2.90 mg/L in the far future. The most substantial decrease (41.3%) was observed in the SSP5 scenario. NH4+ concentration trends varied by SSP: increasing from 0.030 mg/L to 0.035 mg/L under SSP1, while decreasing to 0.029 mg/L, 0.025 mg/L, and 0.024 mg/L under SSP2, SSP3, and SSP5, respectively. Conclusion Under future “warming and wetting” conditions, NO3- concentration in the Niupanshi watershed streams is expected to decrease significantly (with a decrease of up to 41.3% under SSP5). In contrast, NH4+ concentration changes diverge by pathway, showing an increase under SSP1 and decreases under other scenarios. This discrepancy arises from the differing response mechanisms of the two ions to climatic factors: variations in precipitation dominate the transport and dilution of NO3-, whereas temperature changes govern NH4+ dynamics by regulating soil nitrogen transformation processes.
牛盘石流域位于广东清远石门台国家级自然保护区,该区不仅有华南地区典型的湿润森林生态系统,也是粤港澳大湾区的关键生态屏障[10]。因此,本文以牛盘石流域为例,基于分布式耦合生态水文模型CHESS(Coupled Hydrology and Ecology Research Support System)与未来气候预测数据,模拟流域未来溪流溶解态NO3-NH4+离子的浓度变化,为流域水环境风险管理提供科学依据。
模型可信度的评价方法主要用到了决定系数R2与纳什效率系数NSE(Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency)[18]。决定系数R2(Coefficient of Determination)是统计学中用于衡量回归模型拟合优度的指标,反映因变量(目标变量)的变异能被自变量(预测变量)解释的比例,其计算公式为:
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