Key to the Yellow River's Material Cycle and Implications for River Basin Management

Elements are the indelible imprint left by the Earth on rivers and life entities. Here, we unveil the evident inheritance of persistent elements, from the Earth's upper continental crust, through the Yellow River, to the associated life entities along a 5,200 km continuum of the Mother River of the Chinese nation. In particular, we confirm the coherence of “metal community” composed of more than 60 detected metallic elements throughout water, suspended particulate matter, and sediment in the river, and further extend such elemental correlations to fish species and even the tissues in human body. Our study also reveals an interesting fact that media-specific metal abundance occurs in a persistent inverse order with metal toxicity, and microbial cells in the river tend to establish their own self-defense systems against toxic metals through hosting higher-level resistance genes. These findings not only stress the human needs for integrated trace element provision, but also highlight the fundamental importance of elemental coherence in the river-coordinated Earth-life systems for establishing drinking water and dietary standards that benefit ecological and human health.