scholarly journals Land Use and Water Quality

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 2412
Author(s):  
Brian Kronvang ◽  
Frank Wendland ◽  
Karel Kovar ◽  
Dico Fraters
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Surface Waters ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Pollution Source ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Nitrogen Surplus ◽  
Nutrient Sources ◽  
Erosion Processes ◽  
Sources Of Pollution

The interaction between land use and water quality is of great importance worldwide as agriculture has been proven to exert a huge pressure on the quality of groundwater and surface waters due to excess losses of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) through leaching and erosion processes. These losses result in, inter alia, high nitrate concentrations in groundwater and eutrophication of rivers, lakes and coastal waters. Combatting especially non-point losses of nutrients has been a hot topic for river basin managers worldwide, and new important mitigation measures to reduce the input of nutrients into groundwater and surface waters at the pollution source have been developed and implemented in many countries. This Special Issue of the Land use and Water Quality conference series (LuWQ) includes a total of 11 papers covering topics such as: (i) nitrogen surplus; (ii) protection of groundwater from pollution; (iii) nutrient sources of pollution and dynamics in catchments and (iv) new technologies for monitoring, mapping and analysing water quality.

scholarly journals A cost-effectiveness analysis of water security and water quality: impacts of climate and land-use change on the River Thames system

2013 ◽  
Vol 371 (2002) ◽  
pp. 20120413 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. Whitehead ◽  
J. Crossman ◽  
B. B. Balana ◽  
M. N. Futter ◽  
S. Comber ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
Algal Blooms ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Point Sources ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
River Thames

The catchment of the River Thames, the principal river system in southern England, provides the main water supply for London but is highly vulnerable to changes in climate, land use and population. The river is eutrophic with significant algal blooms with phosphorus assumed to be the primary chemical indicator of ecosystem health. In the Thames Basin, phosphorus is available from point sources such as wastewater treatment plants and from diffuse sources such as agriculture. In order to predict vulnerability to future change, the integrated catchments model for phosphorus (INCA-P) has been applied to the river basin and used to assess the cost-effectiveness of a range of mitigation and adaptation strategies. It is shown that scenarios of future climate and land-use change will exacerbate the water quality problems, but a range of mitigation measures can improve the situation. A cost-effectiveness study has been undertaken to compare the economic benefits of each mitigation measure and to assess the phosphorus reductions achieved. The most effective strategy is to reduce fertilizer use by 20% together with the treatment of effluent to a high standard. Such measures will reduce the instream phosphorus concentrations to close to the EU Water Framework Directive target for the Thames.

scholarly journals Modelling Impacts of a Municipal Spatial Plan of Land-Use Changes on Surface Water Quality—Example from Goriška Brda in Slovenia

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matjaž Glavan ◽  
Sara Bele ◽  
Miha Curk ◽  
Marina Pintar
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Surface Water ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Surface Water Quality ◽  
Erosion Processes ◽  
Phosphorus Loads ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Spatial Plan

Intensive agriculture causes nutrient leaching and accelerates erosion processes, which threatens the good quality status of surface waters, as proposed by the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive. The purpose of this study was to define the impact of two alternative agricultural land-use change scenarios defined in a Municipal Spatial Plan on surface water quality by using the Agricultural Policy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) model. As experimental area, we chose a small Kožbanjšček stream catchment (1464 ha) situated in the Goriška Brda region in Slovenia. The area, due to favorable conditions for vineyards, is facing increasing deforestation. The change of 66.3 ha of forests to vineyards would increase the sediment, nitrate, and phosphorus loads in the stream by 24.8%, 17.1%, and 10.7%, respectively. With the implementation of vegetative buffer strips as a mitigation measure of the current situation, we could reduce the sediment, nitrate, and phosphorus loads by 17.9%, 11.1%, and 3.1%, respectively, while a combination of the two land-use change scenarios would result in a slight increase of the above-mentioned loads, corresponding to 0.61%, 2.1%, and 6.6%, respectively, compared to the baseline situation. The results confirm that, as we can increase pollution levels with deforestation, we can also reduce water pollution by choosing proper types of land management measures.

scholarly journals Nitrogen Surplus—A Unified Indicator for Water Pollution in Europe?

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Klages ◽  
Claudia Heidecke ◽  
Bernhard Osterburg ◽  
John Bailey ◽  
Irina Calciu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Pollution ◽  
Water Quality ◽  
Nutrient Management ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Organic Fertilizers ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Nitrogen Surplus ◽  
Nitrogen Budgets ◽  
Farm Level ◽  
Nitrogen Budgeting

Pollution of ground-and surface waters with nitrates from agricultural sources poses a risk to drinking water quality and has negative impacts on the environment. At the national scale, the gross nitrogen budget (GNB) is accepted as an indicator of pollution caused by nitrates. There is, however, little common EU-wide knowledge on the budget application and its comparability at the farm level for the detection of ground-and surface water pollution caused by nitrates and the monitoring of mitigation measures. Therefore, a survey was carried out among experts of various European countries in order to assess the practice and application of fertilization planning and nitrogen budgeting at the farm level and the differences between countries within Europe. While fertilization planning is practiced in all of the fourteen countries analyzed in this paper, according to current legislation, nitrogen budgets have to be calculated only in Switzerland, Germany and Romania. The survey revealed that methods of fertilization planning and nitrogen budgeting at the farm level are not unified throughout Europe. In most of the cases where budgets are used regularly (Germany, Romania, Switzerland), standard values for the chemical composition of feed, organic fertilizers, animal and plant products are used. The example of the Dutch Annual Nutrient Cycling Assessment (ANCA) tool (and partly of the Suisse Balance) shows that it is only by using farm-specific “real” data that budgeting can be successfully applied to optimize nutrient flows and increase N efficiencies at the farm level. However, this approach is more elaborate and requires centralized data processing under consideration of data protection concerns. This paper concludes that there is no unified indicator for nutrient management and water quality at the farm level. A comparison of regionally calculated nitrogen budgets across European countries needs to be interpreted carefully, as methods as well as data and emission factors vary across countries. For the implementation of EU nitrogen-related policies—notably, the Nitrates Directive—nutrient budgeting is currently ruled out as an entry point for legal requirements. In contrast, nutrient budgets are highlighted as an environment indicator by the OECD and EU institutions.

scholarly journals Identifying Pollutants in the Siret River Basin by Applying New Assessment Tools on Monitoring Data: the Correlation of Land Use and Physicochemical Parameter of Water Quality Analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Andreea Mănescu ◽  
Luca Mihail ◽  
Mihalache Raluca
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
River Water ◽  
Municipal Wastewater ◽  
Pollution Source ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Quality Analysis ◽  
Water Supply Systems ◽  
Municipal Wastewater Treatment

Abstract The Siret River are used as raw water source for different municipal water supply systems, yet the Siret River are used as receiving bodies by some inhabitants and industry. In the study the quality of the Siret River water was determinate using a Water Quality Index (WQI). Results are presented from a field study performed on the Bistrita, Moldova, Suceava, Siret, Şomuzu Mare, Trotuş and Tributary River in the study area Siret Basin Romania. The main objective of this study was to determine is to find correlations land use to indicators physical-chemical of water quality, to investigate pollution source is more responsible for river water quality. This is of interest not only research context, but also for supporting and facilitating the application analysis postullend in the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (2000/60/CE) for the establishment of programmers of measures. For this purpose a slightly impact pollution source municipal wastewater treatment, land uses, urban, forest, agriculture and mining was selected and intensively monitored during six years January 2006 - December 2011, sampling was determined to meet the WFD standards for confidence in twenty two different control section of the Siret Basin. The main measures to reduce emissions to the Siret River were calcium, ammonium, sulfate, residue fixed (RF), sodium, chloride, free detergent and municipal wastewater treatment, concentrated on point emission. The main contributor to diffuse this parameters increased when more percentage of land was dedicated to industry and urban and less to forest and mining.

scholarly journals Tracing the influence of land-use change on water quality and coral reefs using a Bayesian model

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Brown ◽  
Stacy D. Jupiter ◽  
Simon Albert ◽  
Carissa J. Klein ◽  
Sangeeta Mangubhai ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
Bayesian Model ◽  
Coastal Zone Management ◽  
Water Clarity ◽  
Catchment Management ◽  
Zone Management ◽  
Sources Of Pollution ◽  
Poor Water Quality

AbstractCoastal ecosystems can be degraded by poor water quality. Tracing the causes of poor water quality back to land-use change is necessary to target catchment management for coastal zone management. However, existing models for tracing the sources of pollution require extensive data-sets which are not available for many of the world’s coral reef regions that may have severe water quality issues. Here we develop a hierarchical Bayesian model that uses freely available satellite data to infer the connection between land-uses in catchments and water clarity in coastal oceans. We apply the model to estimate the influence of land-use change on water clarity in Fiji. We tested the model’s predictions against underwater surveys, finding that predictions of poor water quality are consistent with observations of high siltation and low coverage of sediment-sensitive coral genera. The model thus provides a means to link land-use change to declines in coastal water quality.

Modelling phosphorus pollution risk in agricultural catchments using a spatially distributed Bayesian Belief Network

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Negri ◽  
Miriam Glendell ◽  
Nick Schurch ◽  
Andrew J. Wade ◽  
Per-Erik Mellander
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Management ◽  
Nutrient Loss ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Agricultural Practice ◽  
Pollution Risk ◽  
Agricultural Catchments ◽  
Good Agricultural Practice

<p>Diffuse pollution of phosphorus (P) from agriculture is a major pressure on water quality in Ireland. The Agricultural Catchments Programme (ACP) was initiated to evaluate the Good Agricultural Practice measures implemented under the EU Nitrates Directive. Within the ACP, extensive monitoring and research has been made to understand the drivers and controls on nutrient loss in the agricultural landscape. However, tapering P pollution in agricultural catchments also requires informed decisions about the likely effectiveness of measures as well as their spatial targeting.  There is a need to develop Decision Support Tools (DST) that can account for the uncertainty inherently present in both data and water quality models.</p><p>Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) are probabilistic graphical models that allow the integration of both quantitative and qualitative information from different sources (experimental data, model outputs and expert opinion) all in one model. Moreover, these models can be easily updated with new knowledge and can be applied with scarce datasets. BBNs have previously been used in multiple decision-making settings to understand causal relationships in different contexts. Recently, BBNs were used to support ecological risk-based decision making.</p><p>In this study, a prototype BBN was implemented with the Genie software to develop a DST for understanding the influence of land management and P pollution risk in four ACP catchments dominated by intensively farmed land with contrasting hydrology and land use. In the fist stage of the study, the spatial BBN was constructed visualising the ‘source-mobilisation-transport-continuum’, identifying the main drivers of P pollution based on previous findings from the ACP catchments. A second step involved the consultation of experts and stakeholders through a series of workshops aimed at eliciting their input. These stakeholders have expertise ranging from hydrology and hydrochemistry, land management and farm consulting, to policy and environmental modelling.</p><p>At present, the BBN is being parameterized for a 12km<sup>2</sup> catchment with mostly grassland on poorly drained soils, using a high temporal and spatial resolution dataset that includes hydro-chemo-metrics, mapped soil properties (drainage class and Soil Morgan P), landscape characteristics (i.e. land use and management, presence of mitigation measures and presence of point pollution sources). Preliminary results show that the model captures the difference in P loss risk between catchments, probably caused by contrasting hydrological characteristics and soil P sources.</p><p>Future research will be focussed on parameterizing and testing the BBN in three other ACP catchments. Such parametrization will be pivotal to testing the model in data sparse catchments and possibly upscaling the tool to regional and national scale. Moreover, climate change and land use change modelled scenarios will be crucial to inform targeting of mitigation measures.  </p>

scholarly journals Changes in land use in the buffer zone of lake of the Mała Wełna catchment

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariusz Ptak ◽  
Agnieszka E. Ławniczak
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Nutrient Loading ◽  
Lake Management ◽  
Buffer Zone ◽  
Nutrient Loads ◽  
Buffer Zones ◽  
Nutrient Sources ◽  
Forested Areas ◽  
Water Pollutant

Abstract One of the most important elements in the protection of water quality is buffer zones. In order to protect water quality, appropriate management of these areas is necessary. In the paper, changes in the land use in the buffer zone of 200 m width around lakes in the Mała Wełna catchment over 20 years were analysed. For the study eight lakes larger than 50 ha were chosen. Changes in the land use within the buffer zone were studied from 1980 to 2000, based on topographic maps in the scale 1:10 000. Results show both positive and negative aspects of land changes. An increase in forested areas and grasslands through tilled land were positive aspects of these changes. On the other hand, the enhancement of suburban development in these zones caused increased probability of water pollution from these areas. Calculations of potential nutrient loading from different types of land use in these zones indicated an enhancement of nutrient sources in the lakes within the 20-year study period. However, these changes are not significant in comparison to the nutrient loads contributed by the tributaries. Our study indicated that in the case of flow lakes, more important is an improvement in water quality in the tributaries and a reduction in nutrient sources in the catchment with the purpose of reducing the input of nutrients into the lake. Management of the buffer zone is one of the issues which have to be taken into consideration in lake protection after elimination of the major water pollutant sources.

scholarly journals Changes in Selected Water Quality Parameters in the Utrata River as a Function of Catchment Area Land Use

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 2989
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Dębska ◽  
Beata Rutkowska ◽  
Wiesław Szulc ◽  
Dariusz Gozdowski
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Dissolved Oxygen ◽  
Total Phosphorus ◽  
Surface Waters ◽  
Nitrate Nitrogen ◽  
Ammonia Nitrogen ◽  
Limit Values ◽  
The Impact

Surface waters are very important for society, as they are a source of potable water, as well a water supply for agricultural, industrial and recreational purposes. This paper presents changes in the quality of the water in the Utrata River, along its entire length, as a function of the catchment area’s land use. Water-quality measurements were carried out once a month for a total period of one year (April 2019–March 2020) at 24 measurement points. The concentrations of the following compounds were measured: total phosphorus, ammonia nitrogen and nitrate nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, and chemical oxygen demand. The results were compared with the limit values specified in the Regulation of the Minister of Maritime Economy and Inland Navigation. In order to determine the impact of land use on water quality in the Utrata River, principal component analyses (PCA) were conducted. The research demonstrated a considerably negative impact of agricultural land use and the presence of urban areas on the water quality of the Utrata River, with elevated concentrations of total phosphorus, ammonia nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen and COD, and decreasing concentrations of dissolved oxygen. The presented results point to the need for effective strategies to mitigate the adverse impact of agriculture and urbanisation on the environment and surface waters.

scholarly journals Participatory Approach for More Robust Water Resource Management: Case Study of the Santa Rosa Sub-Watershed of the Philippines

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pankaj Kumar ◽  
Brian Alan Johnson ◽  
Rajarshi Dasgupta ◽  
Ram Avtar ◽  
Shamik Chakraborty ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Quality ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Impact Assessment ◽  
Scenario Analysis ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Future Scenarios ◽  
The Impact

Due to the cumulative effects of rapid urbanization, population growth and climate change, many inland and coastal water bodies around the world are experiencing severe water pollution. To help make land-use and climate change adaptation policies more effective at a local scale, this study used a combination of participatory approaches and computer simulation modeling. This methodology (called the “Participatory Watershed Land-use Management” (PWLM) approach) consist of four major steps: (a) Scenario analysis, (b) impact assessment, (c) developing adaptation and mitigation measures and its integration in local government policies, and (d) improvement of land use plan. As a test case, we conducted PWLM in the Santa Rosa Sub-watershed of the Philippines, a rapidly urbanizing area outside Metro Manila. The scenario analysis step involved a participatory land-use mapping activity (to understand future likely land-use changes), as well as GCM precipitation and temperature data downscaling (to understand the local climate scenarios). For impact assessment, the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) tool was used to simulate future river water quality (BOD and E. coli) under a Business as Usual (BAU) scenario and several alternative future scenarios considering different drivers and pressures (to 2030). Water samples from the Santa Rosa River in 2015 showed that BOD values ranged from 13 to 52 mg/L; indicating that the river is already moderately to extremely polluted compared to desirable water quality (class B). In the future scenarios, we found that water quality will deteriorate further by 2030 under all scenarios. Population growth was found to have the highest impact on future water quality deterioration, while climate change had the lowest (although not negligible). After the impact assessment, different mitigation measures were suggested in a stakeholder consultation workshop, and of them (enhanced capacity of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), and increased sewerage connection rate) were adopted to generate a final scenario including countermeasures. The main benefit of the PWLM approach are its high level of stakeholder involvement (through co-generation of the research) and use of free (for developing countries) software and models, both of which contribute to an enhanced science-policy interface.

scholarly journals A Planning Tool for Optimizing Investment to Reduce Drinking Water Risk to Multiple Water Treatment Plants in Open Catchments

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 531
Author(s):  
Chris Thompson ◽  
Morag Stewart ◽  
Nick Marsh ◽  
Viet Phung ◽  
Thomas Lynn
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Water Treatment ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Pathogenic Bacteria ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Weather Extremes ◽  
Erosion Processes ◽  
Water Treatment Plants ◽  
Sediment Loads

Supplying safe, secure, and reliable drinking water is a growing challenge particularly in regions where catchments have diverse land uses, rapidly growing populations, and are subject to increasing weather extremes such as in the subtropics. Catchments represent the first barrier in providing ecosystem services for water quality protection and bulkwater suppliers are therefore investing in mitigation measures to reduce risk to drinking water quality for consumers. This paper presents an approach to combine data on erosion processes, pathogenic bacteria and protozoa from several sources, determine the highest risks from these hazards and identify an optimum portfolio of intervention activities that provide maximum risk reduction at water treatment plants (WTP) for a given budget using a simulated annealing optimizer. The approach is demonstrated in a catchment with six WTPs servicing small rural to urban populations. The catchment is predominantly used for agriculture. Results show that drinking water risk from protozoa can be reduced for most WTPs for moderate investment budget, while bacteria risk reduction requires significantly larger budget due to the greater number of significant source sites relative to protozoa. Total suspended sediment loads remain a very high risk to most of the WTPs due to the large extent of channel and gully erosion and landslides. A map of priority areas and associated suite of interventions are produced to guide on groundwork.

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