Preliminary study on assessment of nutrient transport in the Taihu Basin based on SWAT modeling

Abstract

With the Taihu Basin as a study area, using the spatially distributed and mechanism-based SWAT model, preliminary simulations of nutrient transport in the Taihu Basin during the period of 1995~2002 has been carried out. The topography, soil, meteorology and land use with industrial point pollution discharge, the loss of agricultural fertilizers, urban sewerage, and livestock drainages were all considered in the boundary conditions of the simulations. The model was calibrated and validated against water quality monitoring data from 2001 to 2002. The results show that the annual total productions of nitrogen (TN) and phosphorus (TP) into Lake Taihu are 40000t and 2000t respectively. Nutrient from the Huxi Region is a major resource for Lake Taihu. The non-point source (surface source) pollution is the main form of catchment sources of nutrients into Lake Taihu, occupied TN 53% and TP 56% respectively. TN and TP nutrients from industrial point pollution discharge are 30% and 16%, and sewerage in both forms of point source and non-point source are TN 31% and TP 47%. Both the loss of agricultural fertilizers and livestock drainages from the catchment should be paid more attention as an important nutrient source. The results also show that SWAT is an effective model for the simulation of temporally and spatially nutrient changes and for the assessment of the trends in a catchment scale.

Nitrogen and phosphorus inputs control phytoplankton growth in eutrophic Lake Taihu, China

“…The external N and P (including point and non-point sources) supplied to Taihu is dominated by riverine discharge. On the basis of the spatially distributed and mechanistic SWAT Model, Lai et al(2006) suggested that sewage released to the rivers was the most important nutrient source, and the industrial point sources were the second highest contribution, each contributing 31% and 30% to TN and 47% and 16% to TP, respectively. Agricultural fertilizer application and livestock were also important nutrient sources, which contributed 15% and 10% to TN, and 14% and 11% to TP, respectively.…”

Presence and patterns of alkaline phosphatase activity and phosphorus cycling in natural riparian zones under changing nutrient conditions

“…Riverine discharge is indicated as the main nutrient source in Taihu watershed (Xu et al, 2010;Lai et al, 2006). Large amounts of untreated wastewater from factories and residential areas are discharged into Wangyu River through its polluted western side rivers (Hu et al, 2008(Hu et al, , 2010, bringing substantial exogenous nutrients into Ezhen, which could significantly impact the water quality into Lake Taihu and the efficiency of the water transfer project.…”

Development of a polder module in the SWAT model: SWATpld for simulating polder areas in south‐eastern China

“…Yan, Gao, and Huang () incorporated a water management scheme to model the irrigation and drainage operations of a polder in a lumped rainfall–run‐off model—the Wageningen Lowland Runoff Simulator. A number of studies have been conducted on the basis of distributed hydrological models in the plain river network regions once the distributed hydrological modelling techniques became widely used (Huang, Wang, Chen, & Huo, ; Lai & Yu, ; Lai, Yu, & Gui, ; Li et al, ; Luo, Su, Zhang, & Yang, ; Wang, ; Xu & Wang, ). These studies fall into three groups in terms of the way they address polders in watersheds.…”