A Review of Water Environmental Capacity Calculation

Abstract

Water environmental capacity is an essential component of water environmental assessment and must be monitored and managed for economic, engineering, and human health reasons. Many efforts have been made to study methods for the calculation of water environmental capacity. This paper reviews available literature on water environmental capacity. The evolutionary history and application scenarios of major water quality models, and water environmental capacity calculation formulas are summarized. Through the analysis of calculation formulas for water environmental capacity, it is found that endogenous pollution factors influence the values of degradation coefficient K and retention coefficient R in water environmental capacity calculation though few studies consider such factors. Therefore, the quantification of endogenous pollution factors (particularly the rheological properties of bed sediments) is important and needs further study.