Asynchronous functional recovery and structural reconfiguration of water-sediment networks in an actively restored lake
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Updated: Oct 31, 2026

Watershed Planning within a Quantitative Scenario Analysis Framework
Published on: July 24, 2016
Wenjun Shi1, Zhichao Zhou1, Junwei Wei2
1Archaeal Biology Center, Synthetic Biology Research Center, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Marine Microbiome Engineering, Key Laboratory of Marine Microbiome Engineering of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Institute for Carbon Neutrality, Institute for Advanced Study, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; College of Life Sciences and Oceanography, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
Abstract:
Internal nutrient loading often constrains the recovery of shallow eutrophic urban lakes. While temporal lags between water and sediment recovery are recognized, how active restoration reshapes their structural relationships remains poorly understood. We conducted a one-year in situ restoration experiment in Nanhu Lake (Wuhan, China) using six hectare-scale ecological enclosures (two replicate enclosures per treatment) to evaluate a gradient of restoration treatments: a baseline ecological restoration (ER; submerged macrophytes (Vallisneria natans), microbial flocculants, and algaecides), phosphorus retention treatment (PR; ER + lanthanum-modified bentonite), and nitrogen-phosphorus reduction treatment (NPR; PR + high-efficiency nitrogen removal materials). Compared with the same season before restoration, water-column conditions changed rapidly across all treatments, with significantly higher dissolved oxygen and lower total phosphorus and chemical oxygen demand, although chlorophyll a and NH4+-N also increased. In contrast, sediment responses lagged behind those of the water column. While most sediment physicochemical parameters remained unchanged after one year, sediment phosphorus-binding capacity increased, whereas total nitrogen and the potential DNRA rate decreased. No significant overall differences among the three restoration treatments were detected across the full sampling period. Furthermore, ecological network analysis identified fewer cross-compartment associations after restoration, suggesting reduced coordination between water-column and sediment dynamics, while water-column total nitrogen retained the highest closeness centrality in both periods. These findings highlight asynchronous water-sediment responses during the first year of restoration and support a phased management perspective that accounts for rapid water-column responses alongside slower sediment adjustment.
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