Water pollution is exacerbated due to irrational human activities in China. Restoring and rebuilding river basin ecosystems are major ecological strategies at present. Controlling the non-point source pollution (NPSP) by reasonable management of land use in the basin and phytoremediation of contaminated waters is the optimum approach. Thus, it is significant to study on the relationship that between landscape change and the aquatic environment, as well as further to analyze on the combined effect of the landscape and water quality. This paper describes the application and development of the "source-sink" landscape theory in China, and the role of the theory in controlling NPSP. From this perspective, a landscape capable of generating NPSP would be a "source" landscape, such as farmland, while another capable of preventing NPSP would be a "sink" landscape, such as forests and wetland. Applying the source-sink landscape theory, it is possible to exert the ecological benefits of the landscape while playing the esthetic value of the landscape. Also, the purification mechanism of plants in contaminated water is discussed. Besides, it is vital that research on water body restoration should focus not only on single discipline but also on integration and coordination between various ones such as ecology, environmental science, and geography to jointly push up researches related to water body phytoremediation. Hopefully, this paper could help to control water pollution from a new perspective, also to improve water environment and benefit human lives.
Keywords: Eutrophication; Non-point source pollution; Phytoremediation; Water quality; “Source–sink” landscape theory.