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Climate variability is an important driver of water treatability in a shallow reservoir

2025· article· en· W4415642817 on OpenAlexafffundabout
Danielle S. Spence, Kristin J. Painter, Ali Nazemi, Jason J. Venkiteswaran, Helen M. Baulch

Bibliographic record

VenueThe Science of The Total Environment · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEnvironmental Science
TopicHydrology and Watershed Management Studies
Canadian institutionsWilfrid Laurier UniversityConcordia UniversityUniversity of SaskatchewanGlobal Institute for Water Security
FundersWater Security AgencyCanada First Research Excellence FundNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaCanadian Water Resources Association
KeywordsClimate changeHydrology (agriculture)Pacific decadal oscillationEl Niño Southern OscillationWater qualityWater levelWater cycleWater use

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Drinking water treatability is defined by multiple parameters that are strongly impacted by climatic and anthropogenic drivers. Working in a shallow reservoir in the Canadian Prairies, generalized additive models (GAMs) were applied to a 33-year dataset to identify drivers of interannual variability in multiple indicators of drinking water treatability. Interannual variability in treatability indicators was substantial. In the most extreme years, annual means were 2.9, 2.4, 1.5, and 1.7 times higher than the long-term averages for odour, turbidity, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and total dissolved solids (TDS), respectively. GAMs showed that these treatability indicators are highly responsive to two modes of climate variability: the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Specifically, cool/wet cycles contributed to elevated turbidity, odour, and DOC, while warm/dry cycles contributed to higher levels of TDS, DOC, odour, and turbidity. The effects of climate variability equate to 0.5–1.7 times the long-term average for each treatability indicator. Hydrological management and nutrients also play a key role, with effects equating to 0.10–1.1 times the long-term average in treatability indicators. Together, these findings show these predictors contributed to substantial variability in water treatability. Although shallow systems in dryland regions may represent extreme examples of climate sensitivity, extreme climatic conditions are expected to become more common, posing substantial risks to water treatment. This study is the first to use GAMs to provide long-term evidence of impacts of natural climate variability and water management to drinking water treatability, potentially offering early warning about changes to source water quality. • Drinking water treatability indicators showed extreme interannual variability. • Large-scale climate oscillations were the strongest driver of treatability. • Effects of climate variability equated to nearly twice the long-term indicator means. • Nutrient and flow management had substantial, but lesser effects on treatability. • Indicators of poor drinking water may be predictable by anticipating climate oscillations.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.149
Threshold uncertainty score0.296

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0010.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.009
GPT teacher head0.222
Teacher spread0.213 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations5
Published2025
Admission routes3
Has abstractyes

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