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Modeling the ecosystem response of the semi-closed Daya Bay to the thermal discharge from two nearby nuclear power plants

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Abstract

A two-dimensional flow model coupled with a nutrient, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and detritus (NPZD) ecosystem model was applied to simulate the thermal discharge of two nuclear power plants near Daya Bay of South China Sea, and their impact on hydrodynamic conditions and ecosystem. The results show that the thermal discharge influence area of neap tide is much larger than spring tide, and the high and mid temperature rise area in winter is much larger than that in summer. More importantly, the present data further confirmed that the Daya Bay ecosystem has significant responses to the thermal discharge in nutrients, phytoplankton and zooplankton. In winter and early spring, the thermal discharge facilitates the growth of phytoplankton and their abundance often peak in March and April. In summer, the thermal discharge inhibits the growth of phytoplankton and their abundance keep at a low level from June to August. Although the abundance of zooplankton changed with phytoplankton, the characteristic of seasonal variation of zooplankton do not coincide with the phytoplankton, but are lagged in time, by nearly one month. Moreover, the concentration of nutrients and chlorophyll a were compared between thermal discharge and the nearby aquaculture, which has shown that the aquaculture contributed more to the eutrophication.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Key Special Project for Introduced Talents Team of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou) (No. GML2019ZD0305) and Innovation Academy of South China Sea Ecology and Environmental Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. ISEE2019ZR02), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U1901211, No. 41876126 and No. 41430966), the National Key Research and Development Plan (No. 2017FY100700), the International Partnership Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 133244KYSB20180012), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDA23050200, No. XDA13010500 and No. XDA13020503), the Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund, South China Sea Fisheries Research Institute, CAFS (No. 2018YB03) and the Guangdong Key Laboratory of Marine Medicine and the Guangdong Key Laboratory of Applied Marine Biology jointly funding open foundation (No. LMB20191003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China

    Rui Jiang & You-Shao Wang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Rui Jiang

  3. Innovation Academy of South China Sea Ecology and Environmental Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China

    You-Shao Wang

  4. Daya Bay Marine Biology Research Station, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 518121, Shenzhen, China

    You-Shao Wang

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  1. Rui Jiang
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Correspondence to You-Shao Wang.

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Jiang, R., Wang, YS. Modeling the ecosystem response of the semi-closed Daya Bay to the thermal discharge from two nearby nuclear power plants. Ecotoxicology 29, 736–750 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-020-02229-w

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