Assessment of ecological health of Baiyangdian lake in China using ecological health index

Abstract

An effective assessment of ecological health in aquatic ecosystems has become an important issue for researchers, policy-maker and environmentalist globally. The potential of thermodynamic oriented ecological indicators such as eco-exergy (Ex), structural eco-exergy (Exst), phytoplankton biomass (BA), and zooplankton biomass (ZA) in ecological assessment and management were used to calculate the ecological health and then correlated individually as well as multiply of Baiyangdian Lake located in the China. To establish a relationship between sub-EHI values of indicators to the overall EHI, data on thermodynamic indicators of the Baiyangdian lake were calculated from literature. The result indicates the ecological health of Baiyangdian lake is coming under the middle categories i.e. EHI= 40-60. A deeper analysis of the relationship between the thermodynamic parameters and EHI using mini tab software and the multiple regression revealed that the R2>0.9 for Baiyangdian Lake indicates that these correlations could be tentatively used to predict the ecological health of the Baiyangdian Lake in the future.