Foreword

With the development of our awareness on sustainable development in resources and the environment, many new scientific and practical topics are emerging, such as best management practices, low impact development, and nature-based solutions. Relative to large and well-regarded water bodies, such as lakes and rivers, small water bodies, including both natural and man-made ponds, pools, streams, etc., are sometimes numerous, widely distributed,and tightly linked to socio-economic development, with multiple ecosystem services to the well-being of human society. Their small size and shallow characteristics, however, leave them traditionally unmonitored, unmapped,and poorly protected and less studied in existing environmental geosciences and relative sustainable management practices. Over the last decade, growing attention is paid to small water bodies from the scientific community and management sectors such as environmental protection, sustainable agriculture,urban planning, etc. This new trend brings a set of recent research and practical initiatives that high light the characteristics and importance of small water bodies across different geographical and climatic regions.

This monograph Hydro-environmental Assessment of Small Water Bodies: From Local to Global Scales timely focuses on small water bodies, in which the authors put great efforts and invested long time on the hydro-environmental assessment of small water bodies at local scales in Jiangsu Province,southeastern China, and perspectives at regional scale of entire southern China and global scales. Based on multidisciplinary research methods and various datasets, and for farm ponds and small reservoirs of southeastern China and the world's non-floodplain wetlands, the authors have successfully verified the hydro-environmental effects of small water bodies in these regions, and proposed new findings for management and environmental sustainability.

In a nutshell, the results obtained in this monograph substantially enhance the knowledge of hydro-environmental effects of small water bodies, especially farm ponds and small reservoirs, at local and regional scales. This knowledge provides useful means to the sustainable use and protection of small water bodies, including the enhancement of their ecosystem services (particularly the ecosystem services of nutrient retention and flood reduction). Furthermore,the refined models and analytic methods of targeted hydro-environmental assessment are potentially transferable to other regions with abundant small water bodies and applicable in future research. I believe that this monograph will provide a useful knowledge base and tool for researchers and resource managers to improve the sustainable use and protection of small water bodies.

Wenjun Chen and Bin He
May 2023

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation to collaborators from Jinling Institute of Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of California Merced, and Stockholm University. Also, this book is jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 42101476 and 42177065],“Qing Lan”Project and Natural Science Research Project of Higher Education Institutions of Jiangsu Province [Grant No. 21KJB170025], Science and Technology Research Program in Key Areas of Guangdong Province [Grant No. 2020B1111530001 and 2019QN01L682], Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [Grant No. BK20180115], Initial Startup Funding for the High level Talents [Grant No. JIT-B-201804] and Research Incubation Project of Jinling Institute of Technology [Grant No. JIT-FHXM-201804], China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [Grant No. 2017M611938], and Postdoctoral Research Funding Programs of Jiangsu Province [Grant No. 1601038B].

Parts of this monograph have been published in the following journal articles:

Wenjun Chen, Josefin Thorslund, Daniel Nover, Mark Rains, Xin Li, Bei Xu, Bin He, Hui Su, Haw Yen, Lei Liu, Huili Yuan1, Jerker Jarsjö, Joshua Viers, 2022.A typological framework of non-floodplain wetlands for global collaborative research and sustainable use.

Wenjun Chen, Daniel Nover, Yongqiu Xia, Guangxin Zhang, Haw Yen, Bin He, 2021.“Assessment of extrinsic and intrinsic influences on water quality variation in subtropical agricultural multipond systems.” Environmental Pollution 276(19):116689.1-116689.13.

Wenjun Chen, Daniel Nover, Haw Yen, Yongqiu Xia, Bin He, Wei Sun, Joshua Viers, 2020.“Exploring the multiscale hydrologic regulation of multipond systems in a humid agricultural catchment.” Water Research 184(3):115987.1-115987.18.

Wenjun Chen, Bin He, Daniel Nover, Haiming Lu, Jian Liu, Wei Sun, Wen Chen,2019.“Farm ponds in southern China: Challenges and solutions for conserving a neglected wetland ecosystem.” Science of the Total Environment 659: 1322-1334.

Wenjun Chen, Bin He, Daniel Nover, Weili Duan, Kaiyan Zhao, Wen Chen, 2018.“Spatiotemporal patterns and source attribution of nitrogen pollution in a typical headwater agricultural watershed in Southeastern China.” Environmental Science and Pollution Research 25(3): 2756-2773.

Wenjun Chen, Daniel Nover, Bin He, Huili Yuan, Kaimeng Ding, Jun Yang,Suozhong Chen, 2018.“Analyzing inundation extent in small reservoirs: A combined use of topography, bathymetry and a 3D dam model.” Measurement 118(9): 202-213.

Wenjun Chen, Bin He, Junting Ma, Chuanhai Wang, 2017.“A WebGIS-based flood control management system for small reservoirs: A case study in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.” Journal of Hydroinformatics 19(2): 299-314.

Wenjun Chen, Bin He, Lei Zhang, Daniel Nover, 2016.“Developing an integrated 2D and 3D WebGIS-based platform for effective landslide hazard management.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 20: 26-38.