A Multi-Criteria Model Selection Protocol for Practical Applications to Nutrient Transport at the Catchment Scale

Tuo, Ye; Chiogna, Gabriele; Disse, Markus

doi:10.3390/w7062851

Cited by 18 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…There is a wide variety of models simulating surface water pesticide concentrations, ranging from simple, data-driven tools to complex watershed models [10,11]. These models differ in scale, model complexity, input data requirements and spatial and temporal output detail [12]. Studying the effect of pesticide application on water quality at the watershed scale requires a long-term hydrological watershed model that includes a land use and management module and provides sufficient spatial detail [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to Simulate the Pesticide Dynamics in the Data Scarce Guayas River Basin, Ecuador

Cambien

Gobeyn

Nolivos

et al. 2020

Water

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Agricultural intensification has stimulated the economy in the Guayas River basin in Ecuador, but also affected several ecosystems. The increased use of pesticides poses a serious threat to the freshwater ecosystem, which urgently calls for an improved knowledge about the impact of pesticide practices in this study area. Several studies have shown that models can be appropriate tools to simulate pesticide dynamics in order to obtain this knowledge. This study tested the suitability of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to simulate the dynamics of two different pesticides in the data scarce Guayas River basin. First, we set up, calibrated and validated the model using the streamflow data. Subsequently, we set up the model for the simulation of the selected pesticides (i.e., pendimethalin and fenpropimorph). While the hydrology was represented soundly by the model considering the data scare conditions, the simulation of the pesticides should be taken with care due to uncertainties behind essential drivers, e.g., application rates. Among the insights obtained from the pesticide simulations are the identification of critical zones for prioritisation, the dominant areas of pesticide sources and the impact of the different land uses. SWAT has been evaluated to be a suitable tool to investigate the impact of pesticide use under data scarcity in the Guayas River basin. The strengths of SWAT are its semi-distributed structure, availability of extensive online documentation, internal pesticide databases and user support while the limitations are high data requirements, time-intensive model development and challenging streamflow calibration. The results can also be helpful to design future water quality monitoring strategies. However, for future studies, we highly recommend extended monitoring of pesticide concentrations and sediment loads. Moreover, to substantially improve the model performance, the availability of better input data is needed such as higher resolution soil maps, more accurate pesticide application rate and actual land management programs. Provided that key suggestions for further improvement are considered, the model is valuable for applications in river ecosystem management of the Guayas River basin.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to Simulate the Pesticide Dynamics in the Data Scarce Guayas River Basin, Ecuador

Cambien

Gobeyn

Nolivos

et al. 2020

Water

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“…Data requirement is usually an important aspect in selecting a model. All four models have the tendency to model the catchment Table 3 Input data required by the selected hydrological and water quality models [22,23,37,38,[53][54][55][63][64][65][66][67] Soil data (7) Layer thickness, bulk density, initial soil water content, field capacity, wilting point, hydraulic conductivity, and porosity Land use and vegetation (5) Land use, vegetation type, leaf area index, root depth, and fertilizer application rates Topography (7) Area, elevation, land surface slope length, land surface slope steepness, hill slope length, hill slope steepness, and hill slope width Note: * Provided as input or calculated by the model. on average, but in terms of hydrological processes SWAT and MIKE SHE demand more data in comparison to HSPF and SWIM, but at the same time can take into account all the desired hydrological processes including pump flow and drainage, not included by HSPF and SWIM.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This review focused on north-eastern German lowland catchments but can be generalized to the other similar catchments in Australia, North-western Europe and North America. Table 6 Openness, availability of graphical user interface and online support for selected models [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67]…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suitability of common models to estimate hydrology and diffuse water pollution in North-eastern German lowland catchments with intensive agricultural land use

Waseem

Kachholz

Tränckner

2018

Front. Agr. Sci. Eng.

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Various process-based models are extensively being used to analyze and forecast catchment hydrology and water quality. However, it is always important to select the appropriate hydrological and water quality modeling tools to predict and analyze the watershed and also consider their strengths and weaknesses. Different factors such as data availability, hydrological, hydraulic, and water quality processes and their desired level of complexity are crucial for selecting a plausible modeling tool. This review is focused on suitable model selection with a focus on desired hydrological, hydraulic and water quality processes (nitrogen fate and transport in surface, subsurface and groundwater bodies) by keeping in view the typical lowland catchments with intensive agricultural land use, higher groundwater tables, and decreased retention times due to the provision of artificial drainage. In this study, four different physically based, partially and fully distributed integrated water modeling tools, SWAT (soil and water assessment tool), SWIM (soil and water integrated model), HSPF (hydrological simulation program-FORTRAN) and a combination of tools from DHI (MIKE SHE coupled with MIKE 11 and ECO Lab), have been reviewed particularly for the Tollense River catchment located in North-eastern Germany. DHI combined tools and SWAT were more suitable for simulating the desired hydrological processes, but in the case of river hydraulics and water quality, the DHI family of tools has an edge due to their integrated coupling between MIKE SHE, MIKE 11 and ECO Lab. In case of SWAT, it needs to be coupled with another tool to model the hydraulics in the Tollense River as SWAT does not include backwater effects and provision of control structures. However, both SWAT and DHI tools are more data demanding in comparison to SWIM and HSPF. For studying nitrogen fate and transport in unsaturated, saturated, and river zone, HSPF was a better model to simulate the desired nitrogen transformation and transport processes. However, for nitrogen dynamics and transformations in shallow streams, ECO Lab had an edge due its flexibility for inclusion of user-desired water quality parameters and processes. In the case of SWIM, most of the input data and governing equations are similar to SWAT but it does not include water bodies (ponds and lakes), wetlands and drainage systems. In this review, only the processes that were needed to simulate the Tollense River catchment were considered, however the resulted model selection criteria can be generalized to other lowland catchments in Australia, North-western Europe and North America with similar complexity.

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“…Here, MIKE SHE is advantageous, since it provides a ready coupling interface to the hydrodynamic model MIKE 11, which can simulate backwater effects, hydraulic structures (e.g., weirs, gates, etc. ), and their operations [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. MIKE SHE is a physically-based distributed hydrological model that allows the integrated modelling of hydrological processes and can simulate the SW and GW interactions within a catchment [4,5].…”

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confidence: 99%

Suitability of a Coupled Hydrologic and Hydraulic Model to Simulate Surface Water and Groundwater Hydrology in a Typical North-Eastern Germany Lowland Catchment

et al. 2020

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Lowland river basins are characterised by complex hydrologic and hydraulic interactions between the different subsystems (aerated zone, groundwater, surface water), which may require physically-based dynamically-coupled surface water and groundwater hydrological models to reliably describe these processes. Exemplarily, for a typical north-eastern Germany lowland catchment (Tollense river with about 400 km 2 ), an integrated hydrological model, MIKE SHE, coupled with a hydrodynamic model, MIKE 11, was developed and assessed. Hydrological and hydraulic processes were simulated from 2010 to 2018, covering strongly varying meteorological conditions. To achieve a highly reliable model, the calibration was performed in parallel for groundwater levels and river flows at the available monitoring sites in the defined catchment. Based on sensitivity analysis, saturated hydraulic conductivity, leakage coefficients, Manning's roughness, and boundary conditions (BCs) were used as main calibration parameters. Despite the extreme soil heterogeneity of the glacial terrain, the model performance was quite reasonable in the different sub-catchments with an error of less than 2% for water balance estimation. The resulted water balance showed a strong dependency on land use intensity and meteorological conditions. During relatively dry hydrological years, actual evapotranspiration (ETa) becomes the main water loss component, with an average of 60%-65% of total precipitation and decreases to 55%-60% during comparatively wet hydrological years during the simulation period. Base flow via subsurface and drainage flow accounts for an approximate average of 30%-35% during wet years and rises up to 35%-45% of the total water budget during the dry hydrological years. This means, groundwater is in lowland river systems the decisive compensator of varying meteorological conditions. The coupled hydrologic and hydraulic model is valuable for detailed water balance estimation and seasonal dynamics of groundwater levels and surface water discharges, and, due to its physical foundation, can be extrapolated to analyse meteorological and land use scenarios. Future work will focus on coupling with nutrient transport and river water quality models.Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 1281 2 of 23 water resources. Hydrological research and forecast has become increasingly important due to the growing problems with the available water resources, and due to this reason, the hydrological forecasts have been modernised, extending from simple flood predictions to detailed water management decisions and practices that require extensive hydrological processes information [1][2][3][4]. Integrated hydrological models play an essential role by providing the necessary information regarding biological, physical, and chemical processes and their interactions within a catchment [5,6]. In general, the temporal and spatial variations of GW and SW resources are imprecisely known which effects the proper management of water resources [7][8][9]. Physically-based dynamically-coupled SW a...

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A Multi-Criteria Model Selection Protocol for Practical Applications to Nutrient Transport at the Catchment Scale

Cited by 18 publications

References 30 publications

Using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to Simulate the Pesticide Dynamics in the Data Scarce Guayas River Basin, Ecuador

Using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to Simulate the Pesticide Dynamics in the Data Scarce Guayas River Basin, Ecuador

Suitability of common models to estimate hydrology and diffuse water pollution in North-eastern German lowland catchments with intensive agricultural land use

Suitability of a Coupled Hydrologic and Hydraulic Model to Simulate Surface Water and Groundwater Hydrology in a Typical North-Eastern Germany Lowland Catchment

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