Determination of unit nutrient loads for different land uses in wet periods through modelling and optimization for a semi-arid region

Date

2016-09-01

Author

Özcan, Zeynep
Kentel Erdoğan, Elçin
Alp, Emre

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

181
views

0
downloads

Diffuse pollution abatement has been a challenge for decision-makers because of the intermittent nature and difficulty of identifying impacts of non-point sources. Depending on the degree of complexity of the system processes and constraints related to time, budget and human resources, variety of tools are used in diffuse pollution management. Decision-makers prefer to use rough estimates that require limited time and budget, in the preliminary assessment of diffuse pollution. The unit pollution load method which is based on the pollution generation rate per unit area and time for a given land use can aid decision-makers in the preliminary assessment of diffuse pollution. In this study, a deterministic distributed watershed model, SWAT is used together with nonlinear optimization models to estimate unit nutrient pollution loads during wet periods for different land use classes for the semi-arid Lake Mogan watershed that is dominated by agricultural activities. Extensive data sets including in-stream water quality and flowrate measurements, meteorological data, land use/land cover (LULC) map developed using remote sensing algorithms, information about agricultural activities, and soil data are used to calibrate and verify the hydraulic and water quality components of SWAT model. Results show that the unit total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) loads (0.46 kg TN/ha/yr and 0.07 kg TP/ha/yr) generated from the watershed during wet periods are very close to the minimum values of the loads specified in the literature and highly depend on the variations in rainfall. Estimated unit nutrient loads both at watershed scale and for different land use classes can be used to assess diffuse pollution control measures for similar regions with semi-arid conditions and heavy agricultural activity.

Subject Keywords

Semi-arid region, Wet periods, Unit pollution loads, SWAT, Lake Mogan, Agricultural diffuse pollution

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/42827

Journal

JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.05.074

Collections

Department of Environmental Engineering, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Quantifying the streamflow response to groundwater abstractions for irrigation or drinking water at catchment scale using SWAT and SWAT-MODFLOW Liu, Wei; Park, Seonggyu; Bailey, Ryan T.; Molina-Navarro, Eugenio; Andersen, Hans Estrup; Thodsen, Hans; Nielsen, Anders; Jeppesen, Erik; Jensen, Jacob Skodt; Jensen, Jacob Birk; Trolle, Dennis (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2020-09-01) Background Groundwater abstraction can cause a decline in the water table, and thereby affects surface streamflow connected to the aquifer, which may impair the sustainability of both the water resource itself and the ecosystem that it supports. To quantify the streamflow response to groundwater abstractions for either irrigation or drinking water at catchment scale and compared the performance of the widely used semi-distributed hydrological model SWAT and an recently integrated surface-subsurface model SW...
Modeling natural attenuation of petroleum hydrocarbons (btex) in heterogeneous aquifers Uçankuş, Tuğba; Ünlü, Kahraman; Department of Environmental Engineering (2005) Natural Attenuation can be an effective cleanup option for remediation of Groundwater contamination by BTEX. One of the important aspects of the methodology that has been recognized recently is that mass removal rates, the most important parameters used to determine effectiveness of the methodology, is controlled by groundwater flow regime, which to a large extent controlled by aquifer heterogeneity. Considering this recognition, the primary objective of this research is to quantitatively describe the relat...
Evaluation of the best management practices in a semi-arid region with high agricultural activity Özcan, Zeynep; Kentel Erdoğan, Elçin; Alp, Emre (Elsevier BV, 2017-12) The arid and semi-arid regions with water scarcity are vulnerable to several stressors such as urbanization, high water demand created by agricultural and industrial activities, point and non-point pollution sources, and climate change. Hence, proactive policies and sustainable water management strategies that are based on decision support systems are crucial in arid and semi-arid regions. Because of large expenses and implementation difficulties associated with the diffuse pollution abatement plans, many a...
Assessment of PCB contamination, the potential for in situ microbial dechlorination and natural attenuation in an urban watershed at the East Coast of the United States Kaya, Devrim; Sowers, Kevin R.; Demirtepe, Hale; Stiell, Brian; Baker, Joel E.; İmamoğlu, İpek; Kjellerup, Birthe (Elsevier BV, 2019-09-15) Sediment contamination is a major environmental issue in many urban watersheds and coastal areas due to the potential toxic effects of contaminants on biota and human health. Characterizing and delineating areas of sediment contamination and toxicity are important goals of coastal resource management in terms of ecological and economical perspectives. Core and surficial sediment samples were collected from an industrialized urban watershed at the East Coast of the United Stated and analyzed to evaluate the ...
Identification of waste management strategies and waste generation factors for thermal power plant sector wastes in Turkey Demir, Cansu; Yetiş, Ülkü; Ünlü, Kahraman (SAGE Publications, 2019-03-01) Thermal power plants are of great environmental importance in terms of the huge amounts of wastes that they produce. Although there are process-wise differences among these energy production systems, they all depend on the logic of burning out a fuel and obtaining thermal energy to rotate the turbines. Depending on the process modification and the type of fuel burned, the wastes produced in each step of the overall process may change. In this study, the most expected process and non-process wastes stemming ...

Citation Formats

Z. Özcan, E. Kentel Erdoğan, and E. Alp, “Determination of unit nutrient loads for different land uses in wet periods through modelling and optimization for a semi-arid region,” JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY, pp. 40–49, 2016, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/42827.