New insights into pollution source analysis using receptor models in the upper Yangtze river basin: Effects of land use on source identification and apportionment

To effectively control pollution and improve water quality, it is essential to accurately analyze the potential pollution sources in rivers. The study proposes a hypothesis that land use can influence the identification and apportionment of pollution sources and tested it in two areas with different types of water pollution and land use. The redundancy analysis (RDA) results showed that the response mechanisms of water quality to land use differed among regions. In both regions, the results indicated that the water quality response relationship to land use provided important objective evidence for pollution source identification, and the RDA tool optimized the procedure of source analysis for receptor models. Positive matrix decomposition (PMF) and absolute principal component score-multiple linear regression (APCS-MLR) receptor models identified five and four pollution sources along with their corresponding characteristic parameters. PMF attributed agricultural nonpoint sources (23.8%) and domestic wastewater (32.7%) as the major sources in regions 1 and 2, respectively, while APCS-MLR identified mixed sources in both regions. In terms of model performance parameters, PMF demonstrated better-fit coefficients (R2) than APCS-MLR and had a lower error rate and proportion of unidentified sources. The results show that considering the effect of land use in the source analysis can overcome the subjectivity of the receptor model and improve the accuracy of pollution source identification and apportionment. The results of the study can help managers clarify the priorities of pollution prevention and control, and provide a new methodology for water environment management in similar watersheds. © 2023