Environ Monit Assess. 2026 Aug 6;198(9):918. doi: 10.1007/s10661-026-15761-9.
ABSTRACT
Reservoir water quality is critical for drinking water security and sustainable watershed management. Land use and landscape patterns can either enhance or attenuate pollutant transport by altering hydrological connectivity, runoff pathways, and retention capacity. However, these effects remain relatively underexplored across seasons and spatial scales in reservoir watersheds. This study used remote sensing data from 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 to assess changes in land use composition, land use intensity, and landscape patterns in the Qiaodian Reservoir watershed, Jinan, China. Furthermore, RDA and PLSR were applied to identify the associations between water quality indicators and variations in land use and landscape patterns based on experimental data. The results showed that from 2005 to 2020, land use change was dominated by grassland loss and landscape pine forest expansion, primarily driven by the conversion of grassland to cultivated land (4.79 km2) and cultivated land to landscape pine forest (3.04 km2). The sub-basin and 100 m buffer scales were identified as key spatial scales affecting water quality. On the sub-basin scale, land use demonstrated its strongest capacity to explain water quality in November. Total Edge (TE), Total Area (TA), Landscape Division Index (DIVISION), and Contagion Index (CONTAG) were identified as important landscape metrics associated with reservoir water-quality variation. These findings provide a scientific basis for targeted land management and reservoir water resource protection.
PMID:42560561 | DOI:10.1007/s10661-026-15761-9
