Application of the SWAT model to assess the impact of changes in agricultural management practices on water quality

Assessing the impacts of sustainable agricultural practices for water quality improvements in the Vouga catchment (Portugal) using the SWAT model

“…agricultural practices, climate change, land use change, nutrients and sediment loads; see Gassman et al, 2014;Krysanova and White, 2015;). Among others, the SWAT model is used to simulate diffuse pollution, to assess the impacts of agricultural management practices on water quality and to quantify the effectiveness of agricultural practices (Zhang and Zhang, 2011;Laurent and Ruelland, 2011;Dechmi and Skhir, 2013;Bosch et al, 2013;Panagopoulos et al, 2014;Strauch et al, 2013;Epelde et al, 2015;Geng et al, 2015;Abbaspour et al, 2015).…”

Different modelling approaches to evaluate nitrogen transport and turnover at the watershed scale

“…Although SWAT does not simulate the aquifer's nitrate concentration explicitly, it was calculated a general concentration based in the HRUs water and N load contribution as performed in Epelde et al (2015). In this study, however, it was not found a satisfactory simulation of the concentration owing to the established new objectives (simulation of the denitrification process).…”

“…In the SWAT and MOHID models, warm-ups were considered when assessing the results. While in the case of the SWAT model the results from 1986 to 2008 were discarded (due to the fact that results were taken from a previous study (Epelde et al, 2015)), in the case of the MOHID model, only results from 2008 were not considered.…”

“…These parameters were identified with a sensitivity analysis performed by an ArcS-WAT Interface tool that combines the Latin Hypercube (LH) and One-factor-At-a-Time (OAT) sampling methods (Veith and Ghebremichael, 2009). The first step in calibration consisted in calibrating the hydrological processes, followed by the N cycle related processes (Epelde et al, 2015). Thus, the parameters establishing water retention in the aquifer (GWMN, ALPHA_BF, GW_DELAY), the parameters controlling the flow between soil and aquifer (GW_REVAP, REVAPMN), the lateral flow (SURLAG), infiltration (CN2) and the evapotranspiration (ESCO) were first calibrated (Table 5).…”

Coupling of SUFI 2 and SWAT for Improving the Simulation of Streamflow in an Agricultural Watershed of South Dakota

“…SWAT model has been extensively used across the globe for assessing the long-term management [11], land use and climate change [1,[12][13][14][15][16] impacts on water quantity and quality at watershed scales. The development of SWAT is a continuation of United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) modeling experience that spans a period of over 30 years [17,18].…”