IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agiwat/v187y2017icp131-139.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seasonal water quality changes in on-farm water storage systems in a south-central U.S. agricultural watershed

Author

Listed:
  • Pérez-Gutiérrez, Juan D.
  • Paz, Joel O.
  • Tagert, Mary Love M.

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the ability of on-farm water storage (OFWS) systems to mitigate off-site nutrient movement in a south-central U.S. agricultural watershed. We examined the seasonal water quality changes in an OFWS system by measuring several physical and chemical constituents at multiple sampling points throughout the system. Water quality sampling occurred every three weeks during the growing season and every six weeks during the dormant season from February 2012 to December 2014. The collected data were grouped into four seasons and then analyzed using boxplots along with the Wilcoxon and Kruskal-Wallis rank-sum tests for detecting changes in nutrient concentrations. Significant water quality changes were observed in the OFWS system by season and nutrient species, indicating a variation in downstream nutrient reduction with season. The in-ditch median removal efficiency, from the center of the tailwater recovery ditch to the outlet, was 54% during winter and 50% during spring for NO3-N; 60% during spring for NH3-N; 26% during autumn and 65% during winter for ortho-P; and 31% during winter and 10% during spring for TP. The in-pond median concentration removal efficiency was ∼77% during summer for NO3-N, while the concentration remained stable during winter, spring and autumn; 53% from winter to spring and 58% from spring to summer for NH3-N; 70% from winter to spring for ortho-P, while remaining stable during the other seasons; and 28% from winter to spring and 55% from spring to summer for TP. Our results support the hypothesis that OFWS systems could mitigate downstream nutrient-enrichment pollution, especially during spring. The results obtained from this study offer a better insight into the behavior of OFWS systems and help enhance the management of agroecosystems from an ecological and hydrological perspective for water quality pollution control and water resource conservation.

Suggested Citation

  • Pérez-Gutiérrez, Juan D. & Paz, Joel O. & Tagert, Mary Love M., 2017. "Seasonal water quality changes in on-farm water storage systems in a south-central U.S. agricultural watershed," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 131-139.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:187:y:2017:i:c:p:131-139
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2017.03.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037837741730094X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agwat.2017.03.014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hollinger, E. & Cornish, P. S. & Baginska, B. & Mann, R. & Kuczera, G., 2001. "Farm-scale stormwater losses of sediment and nutrients from a market garden near Sydney, Australia," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 227-241, April.
    2. Littlejohn, K.A. & Poganski, B.H. & Kröger, R. & Ramirez-Avila, J.J., 2014. "Effectiveness of low-grade weirs for nutrient removal in an agricultural landscape in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 79-86.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pérez-Gutiérrez, Juan D. & Paz, Joel O. & Tagert, Mary Love M. & Sepehrifar, Mohammad, 2020. "Impact of rainfall characteristics on the NO3 – N concentration in a tailwater recovery ditch," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Prince Czarnecki, J.M. & Baker, B.H. & Brison, A.M. & Kröger, R., 2014. "Evaluating flood risk and alterations to hydraulic patterns following installation of low-grade weirs in agricultural systems," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 69-74.
    2. Gunasekhar Nachimuthu & Neil V. Halpin & Michael J. Bell, 2017. "Impact of Practice Change on Runoff Water Quality and Vegetable Yield—An On-Farm Case Study," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-22, March.
    3. Jia, Z. & Yin, X. & Luo, W. & Zou, J. & Chen, C., 2021. "New indexes to evaluate the effect of segmental variations of distributed ditches on their pollutant retention in agricultural landscapes," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 245(C).
    4. Zhang, Jian & Yan, Min & Lu, Xin & Wang, Tao, 2024. "Nutrient removal performance from agricultural drainage by strengthening ecological ditches in hilly areas," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).
    5. Sunohara, Mark D. & Gottschall, Natalie & Craiovan, Emilia & Wilkes, Graham & Topp, Edward & Frey, Steven K. & Lapen, David R., 2016. "Controlling tile drainage during the growing season in Eastern Canada to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus, and bacteria loading to surface water," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 159-170.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:187:y:2017:i:c:p:131-139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.