The relationship between population and river water quality

The interlocking relation between worldwide population expansion and riverine water quality becomes interesting  and would be considered within multiple perspectives:

1. In the past 60 years, world’s population has increased triple in size and is projected as many as 11 billion by 2050.  Along with the rapid rate of population growth, the spatial dimensions and demographic factors alter. These changes have been resulted in unprecedented pressure on riverine systems. Historical and predicted will be studied to determine and predict the influence of these changes in the past as well as in the future. 
2. Food, water resources and living areas are urgently needed to satisfy the growth of human population.  Therefore, the relevant human activities, including agriculture and livestock farming, modification of river water transfers and land use changes,  have  been developed within these 60 years. Accompanied by bloom of industries, urbanization and natural resources exploitation, which give rise to climate change and air pollution, the pace of riverine water pollution has been quicken.  Models will be built to reflect the temporal and spatial variation of river water quality by population -growth-related activities.
3. Technological and economical differences would bring about either positive or negative effects on deterioration of river water pollution caused by factors mentioned above. Thus, the hypothesis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve(EKC) is about to be introduced into the feature work, which may be helpful to get better understand of global geographical variation of river water quality.

For more information about this project please contact Yingrong Wen.