J Arid Land doi: 10.1007/s40333-016-0083-y Science Press Springer-Verlag Regime dynamics of hydrochemical and toxicological parameters of the Irtysh River in Kazakhstan Diana M BURLIBAYEVA1, Malik Zh BURLIBAYEV2*, Christian OPP3, BAO Anming4 1 Department of Water Resources and Land Reclamation, Kazakh National Agrarian University, Almaty 050010, Kazakhstan; 2 Kazakhstan Agency of Applied Ecology, Almaty 050012, Kazakhstan; 3 Department Hydrology & Soil Science, Faculty of Geography, Philipps University, Marburg 35032, Germany; 4 Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China Abstract: Since the Irtysh River flows through the important economic, ecological and social territories of China, Kazakhstan and Russia, the water quality issues growingly draw the attention of the water authorities from these countries. Therefore, a detailed study of the hydrochemical regime and toxicological indicators in Kazakhstan was carried out for understanding the regime dynamics of water quality and its affect factors. The combined assessment of maximum permissible concentration (MPC) of chemical components and biotesting method were proposed and performed for the study area. The results clearly showed that the concentrations of single chemical component at different locations are mostly under MPC standard in a basin scale. However, the watershed surface runoff and tributary stream flow from mining industry areas had high concentration of heavy metals and had significant impact on the water quality near Ust-Kamenogorsk. Furthermore, even the stream water generally meet MPC standard, the results of biotesting method show the toxicity level of water sample is lethal for the test objects of phytoplankton and Daphnia. The survival rates of most water samples are lower than 46.7%. Hereby, this study strongly suggests using combined water assessment methods to evaluate the water quality. Keywords: hydrochemistry; biotesting method; Irtysh River; Kazakhstan Citation: Diana M BURLIBAYEVA, Malik Zh BURLIBAYEV, Christian OPP, BAO Anming. 2016. Regime dynamics of hydrochemical and toxicological parameters in the transboundary Irtysh River. Journal of Arid Land, doi: 10.1007/s40333-016- 0083-y. The water quality issues draw a lot of attention (Boyd and Tucker, 2012; Khan et al., 2013) because of the matter of agriculture demand, economic development, public health and living qualities. Hydrochemical studies have become a part of environmental survey and research (Edet et al., 2013; Shah and Umar, 2015). The water quality management and trend forecast are the main concerns of environmental protection policy (Burlibayev et al., 2003, 2014; Bubonv et al., 2007; Burlibayev and Amirgaliyev, 2012). The dynamic changes of chemical compositions, movement of nature water body, biogeochemical environment and anthropogenic influence make the water quality study a very complex (Zenin and Belousova, 1988) and difficult (Hem, 1985) subject. Even the chemical components in water body might be same, the reaction direction may be totally opposite because of the different external conditions. The complexity of natural water composition shows the same element can be found in different substances and valence states in nature (Stumm and Morgan, 2012). The external conditions may have the direct or indirect impacts from rocks, soils, living ∗Corresponding author: Malik Zh BURLIBAYEV (E-mail: [email protected]) Received 2015-06-02; revised 2015-10-12; accepted 2015-10-19 © Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Science Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 http://jal.xjegi.com; www.springer.com/40333 JOURNAL OF ARID LAND organisms, human activities, climate, relief, water regime, vegetation, hydrogeological and hydrodynamic conditions, etc. (Hem, 1985). Therefore, it is essential to understand the dynamic changes of chemical and biological background in the regional scale. Irtysh River has more than 30% of total national water resources in Kazakhstan. It is essential to the local agriculture and tap-water supply. There are many studies on water quality for different river basins of Kazakhstan recently (Turner and Rabalais, 1991; Shrestha and Kazama, 2007; Juahir et al., 2011; Osibanjo et al., 2011; Varol et al., 2012; Olmanson et al., 2013; Sun et al., 2015). Notably, within the severer water quality issue in Irtysh River basin due to climate and human activities, there have been very few studies on detailed investigation at basin scales. Since Irtysh River flows through the territories of three countries, China, Kazakhstan and Russia, water allocation and industrial activities make the dynamic changes of water quality more complex. Therefore, there is a great joint interests to explore the changes in hydrochemical regime and toxicological parameters for this region. This study aims to reveal the hydrochemical regime at an annual scale for chemical component concentrations and spatially trace the major pollutants in Irtysh River, such as salt content, five- 6+ day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), phosphate, Si, Fe, Cu, Zn, Ni, Cr , Pb, V, Hg, Cd, Mn, As, volatile phenols, petroleum products, fluorides, oxidizability and nitrogen, which form a real picture of the pollution in this water body. Furthermore, toxicity assessment by using biotesting method was performed to investigate the reality of water quality in the view of biological methods. This research characterizes the dynamics of hydrochemical and toxicological parameters of the Irtysh River water and provides useful information for water management authorities. 1 Study area The Irtysh River (Fig. 1) is the largest tributary of the Ob River. The Ob-Irtysh system forms a major drainage basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western Siberia and the Altay Mountains. The river basin lies in 47.1°–53.8°N and 73.4°–83.4°E. The annual mean air temperature ranges from –3.6°С in the southwestern plain areas and near large water bodies (lakes Teletskoye and Zaisan), to –7°С in the mountainous areas. In most areas, the summer is warm with the highest temperature in July up to 22°С while the temperature in winter can drop to –19°С in January. However, the Fig. 1 The hydro-chemical survey points in the Irtysh River basin: Buran village at Black Irtysh River (1); 0.8 km down the hydroelectric dams near city of Ust-Kamenogorsk (2); 0.8 km downstream the Gorvodokanal discharge near city of Semey (3). climate is generally much milder than that of neighbouring areas where the summer is cool and the winter is relatively warm (Vendrov and Kalinin, 1960). The precipitation evenly distributed in plain areas (e.g. 180–300 mm in the Zaisan hollow, Irtysh basin, and Kazakh hills) but significantly Diana M B et al.: Regime dynamics of hydrochemical and toxicological parameters in the… increase in mountain areas (e.g. 300–600 mm in Chingiz-Tau Mountains, Kalbinski ridge, and Saur- Tarbagatai Mountains) due to the strong effects of orography. The number of precipitation days are highly influenced by the elevation, and also increase from southwest to northeast in plain and foothill areas. With total area of 1.6×106 km2, the Irtysh River basin has a well-developed water network system including the Irtysh River, lakes, artificial reservoirs and glaciers. The Irtysh River originates from the southwestern slopes of the Altay Mountains along the Mongolian-Chinese borders with the total length of 4,248 km. In Kazakhstan territory, the average annual runoff of Irtysh River is around 300×106 m3. The Irtysh River is influenced by the snow melting and has frequent flooding events in spring (Burlibayev et al., 2006; INGEO, 2012). Currently the river basin is under the influence of huge anthropogenic load. Therefore, natural and anthropogenic factors together form the current hydrochemical regime of the basin. 2 Methods and data collection 2.1 Methods As one basic standard of water quality assessment in the Republic of Kazakhstan, the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) is used in this study (Alekin, 1970; Zenin and Belousova, 1988; MZSR, 1991a, b; MEB, 1994). MPC is a standard that the amount of harmful substances in the environmental mediums (water, air and soil) practically do not affect the human health and do not cause negative effects on posterity under constant contact or under influence for a certain period of time. The following formula is used to determine the pollution level caused by a particular element. The ratio (Eq. 1) should be less than 1 if the particular element is under maximum permissible concentration. C i <1, (1) MPCi where Ci is the concentration of chemical element i; MPCi is the maximum permissible concentration of chemical element i. As a parallel method, biotesting (bioindication) is also applied in this work. Bioindication can be defined at the level of molecules, cells, organs (organ systems), organisms, populations or ecological community. The increasing level of wildlife organization can lead to complex and implicit relationship among natural factors, biological responses and anthropogenic factors in a study environment. Therefore, the most sensitive and simple organisms have been chosen for biotesing (Evgeniev, 1999). In this study, phytoplankton and Daphnia are selected as test objects. Survival rate of aquatic organisms is a good indicator in this process to determine the toxicity level of water no matter whether the contaminative materials were detected or not. Thus, the biotesting allows to determine the integrated toxicity