Assessment of water pollution in the Tibetan Plateau with contributions from agricultural and economic sectors: a case study of Lhasa River Basin

The freshwater environment of watersheds in the Tibetan Plateau is bound with the safety of the Asian Water Tower. In this study, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) loads delivered to freshwater and the associated gray water footprint (GWF) in the agriculture, tourism, domestic life, and industrial sectors were estimated to assess the seasonal and annual characteristics of the water pollution levels (WPLs) in the Lhasa River Basin from 2006 to 2018, and WPL calculations were compared with actual water quality measurements from 2017 to 2018. We found that more than 90% of the GWF came from anthropogenic sources. From the perspective of the whole basin, domestic life was the largest contributor to both N-related GWFs (52%) and P-related GWFs (50%), followed by agriculture for N-related GWFs (32%) and tourism industry for P-related GWFs (30%). The N emissions into the freshwater environment exceeded the maximum assimilation capacity of the watersheds in individual years at both seasonal and annual scales, while P emissions were completely within the pollution assimilative capacity. Besides, we found the serious N pollution near irrigation areas at the seasonal scale (WPL = 2.7 and TN = 1.11 mg/L). The prosperity of tourism has led to a tenfold increase in N-related GWFs and a fivefold increase in P-related GWFs for the tourism industry near the Lhasa city. The strict top-down unified management for ecological environmental protection in plateaus may be an effective method.