Author
Listed:
- Mohsen Tahmasebi Nasab
(Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Dept 2470), North Dakota State University, PO Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050, USA)
- Kendall Grimm
(Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Dept 2470), North Dakota State University, PO Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050, USA)
- Mohammad Hadi Bazrkar
(Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Dept 2470), North Dakota State University, PO Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050, USA)
- Lan Zeng
(Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Dept 2470), North Dakota State University, PO Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050, USA)
- Afshin Shabani
(Department of Earth System Science & Policy, University of North Dakota, 4149 University Ave Stop 9011, Grand Forks, ND 58202-6089, USA)
- Xiaodong Zhang
(Department of Earth System Science & Policy, University of North Dakota, 4149 University Ave Stop 9011, Grand Forks, ND 58202-6089, USA)
- Xuefeng Chu
(Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Dept 2470), North Dakota State University, PO Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050, USA)
Abstract
Non-point source (NPS) pollution from agricultural lands is the leading cause of various water quality problems across the United States. Particularly, surface depressions often alter the releasing patterns of NPS pollutants into the environment. However, most commonly-used hydrologic models may not be applicable to such depression-dominated regions. The objective of this study is to improve water quantity/quality modeling and its calibration for depression-dominated basins under wet and dry hydroclimatic conditions. Specifically, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied for hydrologic and water quality modeling in the Red River of the North Basin (RRB). Surface depressions across the RRB were incorporated into the model by employing a surface delineation method and the impacts of depressions were evaluated for two modeling scenarios, MS1 (basic scenario) and MS2 (depression-oriented scenario). Moreover, a traditional calibration scheme (CS1) was compared to a wet-dry calibration scheme (CS2) that accounted for the effects of hydroclimatic variations on hydrologic and water quality modeling. Results indicated that the surface runoff simulation and the associated water quality modeling were improved when topographic characteristics of depressions were incorporated into the model (MS2). The Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) coefficient indicated an average increase of 30.4% and 19.6% from CS1 to CS2 for the calibration and validation periods, respectively. Additionally, the CS2 provided acceptable simulations of water quality, with the NSE values of 0.50 and 0.74 for calibration and validation periods, respectively. These results highlight the enhanced capability of the proposed approach for simulating water quantity and quality for depression-dominated basins under the influence of varying hydroclimatic conditions.
Suggested Citation
Mohsen Tahmasebi Nasab & Kendall Grimm & Mohammad Hadi Bazrkar & Lan Zeng & Afshin Shabani & Xiaodong Zhang & Xuefeng Chu, 2018.
"SWAT Modeling of Non-Point Source Pollution in Depression-Dominated Basins under Varying Hydroclimatic Conditions,"
IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-17, November.
Handle:
RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:11:p:2492-:d:181379
Download full text from publisher
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:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:11:p:2492-:d:181379. 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.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.