Ecological Dynamics and System Optimization of Aquatic Ecosystems in Seasonal Storage Ponds for Sustainable Urban Water Management

Sustainable urban water management has emerged as a pressing issue that has to be resolved immediately due to the increasing severity of water environment issues brought on by urbanization. While the seasonal storage pool is an important part of urban stormwater management, optimizing the ecological dynamics of its water ecosystem is of great significance for maintaining the quality of the regional water environment. Currently, the majority of research on seasonal rivers focuses on the exploration of ecological restoration programs and governance evaluation research. As a result, there is relatively little research on the ecosystem restoration of species change process and community change law. This study used the AQUATOX ecological modeling technique to simulate and forecast the seasonal dynamics of aquatic biological communities in the recently built terraced storage ponds in the upper reaches of the Shuifu River. The study’s findings showed that the simulated and real observed values of the water quality indicators were highly consistent, and the model’s fitting efficiency, which varied from 0.73 to 0.98, showed that the simulation results and the real situation agreed well. Subsequent investigation revealed that if the transfer ponds are run until 2026, the aquatic biomass increases by 0.02–16.24%. The summer and fall seasons showed a larger biomass than the winter and spring months between 2023 and 2026. Additionally, seasonal fluctuations had a substantial impact on the impoundment’s biodiversity. In particular, populations of phytoplankton and zooplankton rise quickly in the spring, reach their maximum in the summer and then progressively decline in the fall and winter. Despite their relative stability, fish populations did exhibit minor seasonal variations. Redundancy analysis revealed that the primary drivers affecting the seasonal succession of the biological community in the storage pond were environmental parameters such as water temperature (WT), five-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN). Therefore, a scientific foundation for the logical optimization of the water ecosystem function of the urban seasonal storage pond is provided by the targeted optimization of these environmental factors to support the stable and healthy development of the water ecosystem of the storage pond. This is crucial for advancing the sustainable management of the urban water environment.