Large shallow lakes plays a significant role in the rapid urbanization process. A series of problems have occurred due to urbanization including water quality degradation, flood intensity increase, ecological and environmental issues etc. One of the most important threat comes from eutrophication, as it deteriorates water quality, introduces harmful algal blooms, harms lake ecosystems, affecting human health and hinders social economic development. This thesis presents a series of studies focusing on wind induced hydrodynamic circulation in large shallow lake, with the implication of Taihu Lake from lake scale hydrodynamic study, to lake scale water quality implication, and to basin scale implication. The proposed modelling approach could serve as a basis and provide information on lake scale wind effects on hydrodynamic circulation and catchment scale urbanization implication on water environment for management and planning of Taihu Lake and Taihu Basin. @en

Ongoing eutrophication frequently causes toxic phytoplankton blooms. This induces huge worldwide challenges for drinking water quality, food security and public health. Of crucial importance in avoiding and reducing blooms is to determine the maximum nutrient load ecosystems can absorb, while remaining in a good ecological state. These so called critical nutrient loads for lakes depend on the shape of the load-response curve. Due to spatial variation within lakes, load-response curves and therefore critical nutrient loads could vary throughout the lake. In this study we determine spatial patterns in critical nutrient loads for Lake Taihu (China) with a novel modelling approach called Spatial Ecosystem Bifurcation Analysis (SEBA). SEBA evaluates the impact of the lake's total external nutrient load on the local lake dynamics, resulting in a map of critical nutrient loads for different locations throughout the lake. Our analysis shows that the largest part of Lake Taihu follows a nonlinear load-response curve without hysteresis. The corresponding critical nutrient loads vary within the lake and depend on management goals, i.e. the maximum allowable chlorophyll concentration. According to our model, total nutrient loads need to be more than halved to reach chlorophyll-a concentrations of 30–40 μg L−1 in most sections of the lake. To prevent phytoplankton blooms with 20 μg L−1 chlorophyll-a throughout Lake Taihu, both phosphorus and nitrogen loads need a nearly 90% reduction. We conclude that our approach is of great value to determine critical nutrient loads of lake ecosystems such as Taihu and likely of spatially heterogeneous ecosystems in general.@en

Wind induced hydrodynamic circulations play significant roles in the transport and mixing process of pollutants and nutrients in large shallow lakes, but they have been usually overlooked, while environmental, biological, and ecological aspects of eutrophication problems get the most focus. Herein we use a three-dimensional model, driven by steady/unsteady wind, river discharge, rainfall, evaporation to investigate the spatially heterogeneous, large-scale hydrodynamic circulations and their role in transporting and mixing mechanisms in Taihu Lake. Wind direction and velocity determines the overall hydrodynamic circulation structure, i.e. direction, intensity, and position. A relative stable hydrodynamic circulation pattern has been formed shortly with steady wind (~2 days). Vertical profiles of horizontal velocities are linearly correlated to the relative shallowness of water depth. Volume exchange between subbasins, influenced by wind speed and initial water level, differs due to the complex topography and irregular shape. With unsteady wind, these findings are still valid to a high degree. Vertical variations in hydrodynamic circulation are important in explaining the surface accumulation of algae scums in Meiliang Bay in summers. Vorticity of velocity field, a key indicator of hydrodynamic circulation, is determined by wind direction, bathymetry gradient, and water depth. The maximum change of velocity vorticity happens when wind direction is perpendicular to bathymetry gradient. Furthermore, Lagrangian-based tracer transport is used to estimate emergency pollution leakage impacts, and also to evaluate operational management measurements, such as, the large-scale water transfer. The conclusion is that the large-scale water transfer does not affect the hydrodynamic circulation and volume exchanges between subbasins significantly, but succeeds to transport and then mix the fresh, clean Yangtze River water to a majority area of Taihu Lake. @en

As the third largest fresh water lake in China, Taihu Lake is suffering from serious eutrophication, where nutrient loading from tributary and surrounding river networks is one of the main contributors. In this study, water age is used to investigate the impacts of tributary discharge and wind influence on nutrient status in Taihu Lake, quantitatively. On the base of sub-basins of upstream catchments and boundary conditions of the lake, multiple inflow tributaries are categorized into three groups. For each group, the water age has been computed accordingly. A well-calibrated and validated three-dimensional Delft3D model is used to investigate both spatial and temporal heterogeneity of water age. Changes in wind direction lead to changes in both the average value and spatial pattern of water age, while the impact of wind speed differs in each tributary group. Water age decreases with higher inflow discharge from tributaries; however, discharge effects are less significant than that of wind. Wind speed decline, such as that induced by climate change, has negative effects on both internal and external nutrient source release, and results in water quality deterioration. Water age is proved to be an effective indicator of water exchange efficiency, which may help decision-makers to carry out integrated water management at a complex basin scale.@en

High resolution numerical weather models have recently raised a great interest in the InSAR community for atmospheric phase screen (APS) mitigation. Following the research carried out in [1], in this study we focus on investigating the sensitivity of WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) predictions to the model parameter settings which may substantially affect the result of water vapor modeling and to different boundary conditions. We validate the model predictions using atmosphere-only interferograms as well as radiosonde records. Our result shows that the radiosonde records (on average) agree very well with the WRF predictions based on our new model settings. However, in terms of spatio-temporal delay variation, the new settings do not always lead to a better prediction and the correction of atmospheric delay is case dependent. Therefore, we conclude that WRF lacks the reliability to correct the realistic APS in interferograms.@en

High resolution numerical weather models have recently raised a great interest in the InSAR community for atmospheric phase screen (APS) mitigation. Following the research carried out in [1], in this study we focus on investigating the sensitivity of WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) predictions to the model parameter settings which may substantially affect the result of water vapor modeling and to different boundary conditions. We validate the model predictions using atmosphere-only interferograms as well as radiosonde records. Our result shows that the radiosonde records (on average) agree very well with the WRF predictions based on our new model settings. However, in terms of spatio-temporal delay variation, the new settings do not always lead to a better prediction and the correction of atmospheric delay is case dependent. Therefore, we conclude that WRF lacks the reliability to correct the realistic APS in interferograms.@en

With the method of a wind tank experiment, the real scenario of lakes with horizontal and vertical circulation of wind-induced flows is considered, and the features of wind wave height and its distribution in the different conditions of wind blowing distance, wind speed and water depth are studied systematically. Afterwards, comparison of the wave height distributions derived directly from experiment and the typical wave height distribution models show that some defects exist in typical wave height distribution models when describing wind wave height distribution in the wave growth stage. On this basis, we propose a new distribution model which is suitable for the description of wind wave height during the growth stage, and the model parameters are acquired with the programming solution method. Finally, the model is further optimized by relating B to σa, and Hs to σa. Comparison results of the optimized model and the typical ones show that the optimized model has advantages in calculation accuracy and convenience of use.@en

With the method of a wind tank experiment, the real scenario of lakes with horizontal and vertical circulation of wind-induced flows is considered, and the features of wind wave height and its distribution in the different conditions of wind blowing distance, wind speed and water depth are studied systematically. Afterwards, comparison of the wave height distributions derived directly from experiment and the typical wave height distribution models show that some defects exist in typical wave height distribution models when describing wind wave height distribution in the wave growth stage. On this basis, we propose a new distribution model which is suitable for the description of wind wave height during the growth stage, and the model parameters are acquired with the programming solution method. Finally, the model is further optimized by relating B to σa, and Hs to σa. Comparison results of the optimized model and the typical ones show that the optimized model has advantages in calculation accuracy and convenience of use.@en