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Sustainable Research on Water Quality Monitoring and Nutrient Pollution Control

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Quality and Contamination".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 885

Special Issue Editors

Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research and School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Interests: water pollution; hydrodynamic modeling; water quality modeling
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Guest Editor
Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR), Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Interests: water management; hydrology; urban water; coastal flooding
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
The School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou 215009, China
Interests: water management; environment management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Excessive nutrient pollution from agricultural runoff, wastewater, and industrial discharges leads to eutrophication, harmful algal blooms, and hypoxia, threatening freshwater and coastal ecosystems. These issues are further exacerbated by the complex and intensifying impacts of anthropogenic activities and climate change. This Special Issue focuses on sustainable approaches for monitoring and mitigating water pollution.

Advanced technologies like remote sensing, IoT sensor networks, environmental DNA (eDNA), and digital twins offer eco-friendly, real-time monitoring and predictive modeling of water quality. These innovations help assess nutrient dynamics, predict algal blooms, and manage hypoxia, promoting sustainable water management and ecosystem health. Machine learning and AI models, along with biogeochemical models, provide valuable insights for developing early warning systems and nature-based solutions. These tools support adaptive, policy-driven water management strategies aimed at long-term sustainability and ecosystem restoration.

The scope of this research topic includes, but is not limited to, the following (all experimental, observational, investigative, and modeling research are welcomed):

  • Sustainable management of eutrophication and nutrient dynamics;
  • Monitoring and forecasting of algal blooms;
  • Hypoxia formation, early detection, and mitigation strategies;
  • Applications of remote sensing, IoT, eDNA, etc., in sustainable water quality monitoring;
  • Machine learning, AI, and digital twin applications for sustainable water systems;
  • Coupled physical–biogeochemical modeling to support restoration and policy;
  • Nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based management strategies.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Yang Song
Dr. Yi Hong
Dr. Chunqi Shen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable water management
  • eutrophication
  • harmful algal blooms
  • hypoxia
  • environmental DNA
  • digital twin
  • IoT and remote sensing
  • machine learning and AI
  • biogeochemical modeling
  • ecosystem restoration

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

25 pages, 5552 KB  
Article
Rapid Prediction Approach for Water Quality in Plain River Networks: A Data-Driven Water Quality Prediction Model Based on Graph Neural Networks
by Man Yuan, Yong Li, Linglei Zhang, Wenjie Zhao, Xingnong Zhang and Jia Li
Water 2025, 17(17), 2543; https://doi.org/10.3390/w17172543 - 27 Aug 2025
Viewed by 560
Abstract
With the rapid development of socioeconomics and the continuous advancement of urbanization, water environment issues in plain river networks have become increasingly prominent. Accurate and reliable water quality (WQ) predictions are a prerequisite for water pollution warning and management. Data-driven modeling offers a [...] Read more.
With the rapid development of socioeconomics and the continuous advancement of urbanization, water environment issues in plain river networks have become increasingly prominent. Accurate and reliable water quality (WQ) predictions are a prerequisite for water pollution warning and management. Data-driven modeling offers a promising approach for WQ prediction in plain river networks. However, existing data-driven models suffer from inadequate capture of spatiotemporal (ST) dependencies and misalignment between direct prediction strategy assumptions with actual data characteristics, limiting prediction accuracy. To address these limitations, this study proposes a spatiotemporal graph neural network (ST-GNN) that integrates four core modules. Experiments were performed within the Chengdu Plain river network, with performance comparisons against five baseline models. Results suggest that ST-GNN achieves rapid and accurate WQ prediction for both short-term and long-term, reducing prediction errors (MAE, RMSE, MAPE) by up to 46.62%, 37.68%, and 45.67%, respectively. Findings from the ablation experiments and autocorrelation analysis further confirm the positive contribution of the core modules in capturing ST dependencies and eliminating data autocorrelation. This study establishes a novel data-driven model for WQ prediction in plain river networks, supporting early warning and pollution control while providing insights for water environment research. Full article
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