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

Rocha, João; Roebeling, Peter; Rial-Rivas, M. E.

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.07.038

Cited by 47 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 61 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…SWAT, jointly developed by USDA-ARS and Texas A&M AgriLife Research, is a watershedscale, physically based model incorporating weather, soil, land cover, and land management data to simulate surface and subsurface hydrology, various chemical and sediment fluxes, and crop development and yields (Arnold et al 1998). SWAT, one of the most commonly used and well supported modeling systems, has been widely used to predict the environmental impact of land use, land management practices, crop management, and climate change (Douglas-Mankin et al 2010;Abbaspour et al 2015;Rocha et al 2015;Wagena et al 2016;Ashraf-Vaghefi et al 2017;Sinnathamby et al 2017). SWAT requires meteorological input data including precipitation, temperature, and solar radiation as well as soils data, land use/management information, and elevation data.…”

Section: Swat-vsa Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meeting Water Quality Goals under Climate Change in Chesapeake Bay Watershed, USA

Bosch

Wagena

Ross

et al. 2018

J American Water Resour Assoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change may increase precipitation, temperatures, and pollution loading and necessitate additional measures and costs to achieve water quality goals. We used two climate change models and the mean of the ensemble of seven climate models (Ensemble Mean), a yield prediction model (Soil and Water Assessment Tool‐Variable Source Area), and a farm economic model to estimate how climate change would affect yields and the costs of reducing nitrogen (N) loading in an agricultural subbasin of the Chesapeake Bay. We estimated costs of meeting water quality goals based on the reduction in farm net returns from limits on N loadings under historical and future climate scenarios. Estimated costs of meeting water quality goals increase under future climate for one of the two climate models and for the Ensemble Mean. Major reasons for increased costs are higher predicted N loading from crops and higher N loading reductions to be achieved under future climate. The farm meets N limits by eliminating wheat and reducing corn and soybean production as well as increased use of best management practices (BMPs) including Conservation Reserve Program. Researchers should analyze effects of climate change on the costs of meeting water quality goals using multiple climate change prediction models and considering possible crop substitutions as well as crop and livestock BMPs. Further research should consider how commodity market reactions to producers’ choices under climate change affect costs of meeting water quality goals.

show abstract

Section: Swat-vsa Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meeting Water Quality Goals under Climate Change in Chesapeake Bay Watershed, USA

Bosch

Wagena

Ross

et al. 2018

J American Water Resour Assoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Process-based models are widely used to evaluate the impact of different management strategies on hydrology and water quality of a watershed or field under different environmental conditions (Tuppad et al 2010;Rocha et al 2015;Zhang et al 2016). Numerous studies have reported application of watershed-scale models like the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) (Arnold et al 1998) or fieldscale models like the Agricultural Policy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) model (Williams et al 2008) to aid decision makers in identifying efficient management practices that reduce environmental footprints while increasing crop production (Tuppad et al 2010;Kumar et al 2011;Francesconi et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Parallel Computation Tool to Enable Dynamic Sensitivity and Model Performance Analysis of APEX: Evapotranspiration Modeling

Talebizadeh

Moriasi

Steiner

et al. 2019

J American Water Resour Assoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Global sensitivity analysis can be used for assessing the relative importance of model parameters on model outputs. The sensitivity of parameters usually indicates a temporal variation due to variation in the environmental conditions (e.g., variation in weather or plant growth). In addition, the size of averaging window by which the outputs of a model are aggregated or averaged may impact parameter sensitivities. In this study, temporal variation of parameters sensitives, model performance, as well as the impact of the size of time‐averaging window on evapotranspiration (ET) prediction using the Agricultural Policy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) model are investigated. To achieve these goals, an open‐source package named PARAPEX was developed in R and used to perform dynamic sensitivity and model performance analysis of APEX using parallel computation. PARAPEX reduced the computation time from 5,939 to 379 s (using 20 and 1 computation nodes, respectively). The sensitivity analysis results indicated the parameters accounting for the reducing effect of plant cover on evaporation from the soil surface, the effect of soil on the plant root growth, and the effect of cycling and transformation dynamics of organic matter at the top soil layer as the top sensitive parameters based on the mean daily simulated ET and the Nash–Sutcliffe model performance measure. The dynamic performance analysis indicated poor ET predictions by APEX during the growing seasons. Editor's note: This paper is part of the featured series on Optimizing Ogallala Aquifer Water Use to Sustain Food Systems. See the February 2019 issue for the introduction and background to the series.

show abstract

“…This software is based on a mathematical model developed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) [1], [2]. This software was selected because it is a physical model that requires the introduction of a series of spatio-temporal data, to predict the impact of human interventions (e. g. changes in agriculture practices and the addition of chemical fertilizers) in hydrological and chemical processes in river basins [3], [4]. The MIKE HYDRO Basin is software developed by the Danish Hydrologic Institute [5] and is used as a decision support tool for integrated water resources management and planning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Hydrology and Water Allocation With Swat and Mike Hydro Basin in the Sabor River Basin, Portugal

Santos

Fernandes

Cortes

et al. 2018

WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hydrological modelling is an important tool for the detailed evaluation of hydrological processes, allowing the analysis of the consequences of current management practices and the prediction of the impact of medium-and long-term agricultural and demographic projections. The present study intends to analyze the water management practices and demographic evolution of the Sabor River basin between 1960 and 2009, and to evaluate the medium-and long-term impact of agricultural and demographic projections. To that end, we used two separate software packages to fulfill the proposed goal, SWAT and MIKE HYDRO Basin. This SWAT was used in the construction of the hydrological model and MIKE HYDRO Basin in the simulation of water allocation, namely irrigation and domestic consumption. Primary results indicate that the low population density recorded in the basin area between 1960 and 2009 was negligible and had no significant impact on the flow. However, as the agricultural area occupies 59% of the basin, the water consumption for irrigation represented, on average, 27% of the streamflow.

show abstract

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

Cited by 47 publications

References 61 publications

Meeting Water Quality Goals under Climate Change in Chesapeake Bay Watershed, USA

Meeting Water Quality Goals under Climate Change in Chesapeake Bay Watershed, USA

A Parallel Computation Tool to Enable Dynamic Sensitivity and Model Performance Analysis of APEX: Evapotranspiration Modeling

Analysis of Hydrology and Water Allocation With Swat and Mike Hydro Basin in the Sabor River Basin, Portugal

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About