Abstract:

The midlower Yangtze shallow lakes have important functions of ecological services. However, these lakes are threatened by multiple stressors such as riverlake isolation and eutrophication. In recent years, conservation and rehabilitation of the ecological environments of lakes have received more and more attentions. However, the strategies of lake management taken are not as effective as expected. The fundamental underlying cause is lack of a systematic understanding on the lake problems which are actually an embodiment of various stresses in the whole catchments. Because of this, stopgap measures have been widely applied to solve the problems of lakes. This paper therefore proposed an environmental-hydrological-ecological-economical synergetic managing strategy to conserve and rehabilitate the ecological environments of Yangtze lakes: to apply environmental engineering in lakes and their catchments to control the pollutant loading to lakes, ecohydrological engineering to recover the natural hydrological regimes, and ecological rehabilitating engineering to strengthen the selfpurification abilities of organisms; to establish an incentive and restraining mechanism for conservation and rehabilitation of lakes based on an economic system of water environment, and establish an assessment system of ecological health for adaptive management. The premise of the synergetic managing strategy is to clarify the subjects of responsibility