Hydrologic Alterations Predicted by Seasonally-Consistent Subset Ensembles of General Circulation Models

Citation: Sheshukov, A.Y.; Douglas-Mankin, K.R. Hydrologic Alterations Predicted by Seasonally-Consistent Subset Ensembles of General Circulation Models. Climate 2017, 5, 44.The Missouri River system has a large water storage capacity, where baseflow plays an important role. Understanding historical baseflow characteristics with respect to climate and land use impacts is essential for effective planning and management of water resources in the Missouri River Basin (MORB). This study evaluated statistical trends in baseflow and precipitation for 99 MORB minimally disturbed watersheds during 1950–2014. Elasticity of baseflow to climate variability and agricultural land use change were quantified for the 99 studied watersheds. Baseflow was derived from daily streamflow records with a recursive digital filter method. The results showed that baseflow varied between 38 and 80% (0 and 331 mm/year) of total streamflow with an average of 60%, indicating that more than half of streamflow in the MORB is derived from baseflow. The trend analysis revealed that precipitation increased during the study period in 78 out of 99 watersheds, leading to 1–3.9% noticeable increase in baseflow for 68 of 99 watersheds. Although the changes in baseflow obtained in this study were a result of the combined effects of climate and land use change across the basin, upward trends in baseflow generally coincide with increased precipitation and agricultural land use trends in the basin. Agricultural land use increase mostly led to a 0–5.7% decrease in annual baseflow in the basin, except toward east of the basin where baseflow mostly increased with agricultural land use increase (0.1–2.0%). In general, a 1% increase in precipitation and a 1% increase in agricultural land use resulted in 1.5% increase and 0.2% decrease in baseflow, respectively, during the study period. These results are entirely dependent on the quality of data used; however, they provide useful insight into the relative influence of climate and land use change on baseflow conditions in the Great Plains region of the USA

Evaluating ephemeral gullies with a process-based topographic index model

Soil conservation practices have been implemented to control soil degradation from sheet and rill erosion, but excessive sediment runoff remains among the most prevalent water quality problems in the world. Ephemeral gully (EG) erosion has been recognized as a major source of sediment in agricultural watersheds; thus, predicting location and length of EGs is important to assess sediment contribution from EG erosion. Geomorphological models are based on topographic information and ignore other important factors such as precipitation, soil, topography, and land use/land management practices, whereas physically based models are complex, require detailed input information, and are difficult to apply to larger areas. In this study, an approach was developed to incorporate a process-based Overland Flow-Turbulent (OFT) EG model that contained factors accounting for drainage area, surface roughness, slope, soil critical shear stress, and surface runoff in the ArcGIS environment. Two hydrologic models, Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and ArcCN-Runoff (ACR), were adopted to simulate precipitation excess in Goose Creek watershed in central Kansas, USA. These two realizations of the OFT model were compared with the Slope-Area (SA) topographic index model for accuracy of EG location identification and length calculation. The critical threshold index in the SA model was calibrated in a single field in the watershed prior to EG identification whereas the OFT models were uncalibrated. Results demonstrated overall similar performance between calibrated SA model and uncalibrated OFT-SWAT model, and both outperformed the uncalibrated OFT-ACR model. In simulation of EG location, the OFT-SWAT model resulted in 12% fewer false negatives but 8% more false positives than the SA model, compared with 19% fewer false positive and 6% more false negatives than the OFT-ACR model. Greater errors in runoff estimation by ACR translated directly into errors in EG simulation. All models over-predicted EG lengths compared with observed data, though OFT-SWAT and SA models did so with better fit exceedance probability curves, about zero Nash-Sutcliff model efficiency and ≤40% bias compared to -3 model efficiency and >100% bias for OFT-ACR. Success of the uncalibrated OFT-SWAT model in producing satisfactory predictions of EG location and EG length shows promise for process-based EG simulation. The OFT-SWAT model used data and parameters also commonly used for SWAT model development, which should simplify its adoption to other watersheds and regions. Further testing is needed to determine the robustness of the OFT-SWAT model to dissimilar field and hydrologic conditions. It is expected that inclusion of more site-specific physical properties in OFT-SWAT would improve model performance in predicting location and length of EGs, which is essential for accurate estimation of EG sediment erosion rates

Strategic targeting of cropland management using watershed modeling

Pushpa Tuppad1, Kyle R. Douglas-Mankin2, Kent A. McVay3(1. Texas AgriLife Research, 1500 Research Parkway, Suite B223, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA;2. Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA;3. Railroad Highway, Southern Agricultural Research Center, Huntley, MT 59037, USA) Abstract: Effective water-quality protection should target Best Management Practices (BMPs) on watershed areas that contribute most to water-quality impairment instead of the typical voluntary implementation of practices, which may not be better than a random distribution of BMPs within a watershed.  This paper demonstrates a strategic approach for targeting watershed areas to maximize water-quality benefits from BMP implementation.  Almost half of the Smoky Hill River Watershed, Kansas, USA is cropland, a major sediment and nutrient source.  The impacts of reduced tillage, edge-of-field vegetative filter strips, and contoured-terraced practices on erosion and nutrient loads both overland and at the watershed outlet were evaluated using either random or targeted implementation, based on simulated average subbasin erosion rate.  The targeted approach was more effective in reducing sediment and nutrients, both at subbasin and watershed levels.  Annual average overland pollutant load reductions of 10% required BMP adoption on less than half the land area with targeted versus random placement.  The benefits of targeting were greater for initial increments of BMP adoption and decreased as implementation area increased.Keywords: targeting, conservation practices, erosion, SWAT modeling, watershed Citation: Pushpa Tuppad, Kyle R. Douglas-Mankin, Kent A. McVay.  Strategic targeting of cropland management using watershed modeling.  Agric Eng Int: CIGR Journal, 2010, 12(3): 12-24. &nbsp

Pasture BMP effectiveness using an HRU-based subarea approach in SWAT

Citation: Aleksey Y. Sheshukov, Kyle R. Douglas-Mankin, Sumathy Sinnathamby, Prasad Daggupati, Pasture BMP effectiveness using an HRU-based subarea approach in SWAT, Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 166, 2016, Pages 276-284, ISSN 0301-4797, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.10.023.Many conservation programs have been established to motivate producers to adopt best management practices (BMP) to minimize pasture runoff and nutrient loads, but a process is needed to assess BMP effectiveness to help target implementation efforts. A study was conducted to develop and demonstrate a method to evaluate water-quality impacts and the effectiveness of two widely used BMPs on a livestock pasture: off-stream watering site and stream fencing. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was built for the Pottawatomie Creek Watershed in eastern Kansas, independently calibrated at the watershed outlet for streamflow and at a pasture site for nutrients and sediment runoff, and also employed to simulate pollutant loads in a synthetic pasture. The pasture was divided into several subareas including stream, riparian zone, and two grazing zones. Five scenarios applied to both a synthetic pasture and a whole watershed were simulated to assess various combinations of widely used pasture BMPs: (1) baseline conditions with an open stream access, (2) an off-stream watering site installed in individual subareas in the pasture, and (3) stream or riparian zone fencing with an off-stream watering site. Results indicated that pollutant loads increase with increasing stocking rates whereas off-stream watering site and/or stream fencing reduce time cattle spend in the stream and nutrient loads. These two BMPs lowered organic P and N loads by more than 59% and nitrate loads by 19%, but TSS and sediment-attached P loads remained practically unchanged. An effectiveness index (EI) quantified impacts from the various combinations of off-stream watering sites and fencing in all scenarios. Stream bank contribution to pollutant loads was not accounted in the methodology due to limitations of the SWAT model, but can be incorporated in the approach if an amount of bank soil loss is known for various stocking rates. The proposed methodology provides an adaptable framework for pasture BMP assessment and was utilized to represent a consistent, defensible process to quantify the effectiveness of BMP proposals in a BMP auction in eastern Kansas

WETLANDS AND COASTAL SYSTEMS: PROTECTING AND RESTORING VALUABLE ECOSYSTEMS

Wetlands and coastal systems are unique, highly productive, and often threatened landscapes that provide a host of services to both humans and the environment. This article introduces a five-article Wetlands and Coastal Systems Special Collection that evolved from a featured session at the 2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Collection provides perspectives on tools and techniques for enhancing the protection and restoration of wetlands and coastal systems with emphasis on vegetation, hydrology, water quality, and planning. Topics span the Florida Everglades (two articles) and Virginia floodplain (one article) wetland systems and include remote sensing (one article) and geographic information system-based (one article) modeling tools developed to address wetland planning and analysis issues. The Special Collection provides valuable information to engineers, scientists, planners, and other specialists working on large-scale and small-scale wetlands and coastal systems

The environmental effects of crop price increases: Nitrogen losses in the U.S. Corn Belt

Citation: Hendricks, N. P., Sinnathamby, S., Douglas-Mankin, K., Smith, A., Sumner, D. A., & Earnhart, D. H. (2014). The environmental effects of crop price increases: Nitrogen losses in the U.S. Corn Belt. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 68(3), 507–526. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2014.09.002High corn prices cause farmers to plant more corn on fields that were planted to corn in the previous year, rather than alternating between corn and soybeans. Cultivating corn after corn requires greater nitrogen fertilizer and some of this nitrogen flows into waterways and causes environmental damage. We estimate the effect of crop prices on nitrogen losses for most fields in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana using crop data from satellite imagery. Spatial variation in these high-resolution estimates highlights the fact that the environmental effects of agriculture depend not only on what is grown, but also on where and in what sequence it is grown. Our results suggest that the change in corn and soybean prices due to a billion gallons of ethanol production expands the size of the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico by roughly 30 square miles on average, although there is considerable uncertainty in this estimate

Simulation of Daily Flow Pathways, Tile-Drain Nitrate Concentrations, and Soil-Nitrogen Dynamics Using SWAT

Tile drainage significantly alters flow and nutrient pathways and reliable simulation at this scale is needed for effective planning of nutrient reduction strategies. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been widely utilized for prediction of flow and nutrient loads, but few applications have evaluated the model\u27s ability to simulate pathway-specific flow components or nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) concentrations in tile-drained watersheds at the daily time step. The objectives of this study were to develop and calibrate SWAT models for small, tile-drained watersheds, evaluate model performance for simulation of flow components and NO3-N concentration at daily intervals, and evaluate simulated soil-nitrogen dynamics. Model evaluation revealed that it is possible to meet accepted performance criteria for simulation of monthly total flow, subsurface flow (SSF), and NO3-N loads while obtaining daily surface runoff (SURQ), SSF, and NO3-N concentrations that are not satisfactory. This limits model utility for simulating best management practices (BMPs) and compliance with water quality standards. Although SWAT simulates the soil N-cycle and most predicted fluxes were within ranges reported in agronomic studies, improvements to algorithms for soil-N processes are needed. Variability in N fluxes is extreme and better parameterization and constraint, through use of more detailed agronomic data, would also improve NO3-N simulation in SWAT. Editor\u27s note: This paper is part of the featured series on SWAT Applications for Emerging Hydrologic and Water Quality Challenges. See the February 2017 issue for the introduction and background to the series

Modelling the impacts of agricultural management practices on river water quality in Eastern England

Agricultural diffuse water pollution remains a notable global pressure on water quality, posing risks to aquatic ecosystems, human health and water resources and as a result legislation has been introduced in many parts of the world to protect water bodies. Due to their efficiency and cost-effectiveness, water quality models have been increasingly applied to catchments as Decision Support Tools (DSTs) to identify mitigation options that can be introduced to reduce agricultural diffuse water pollution and improve water quality. In this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied to the River Wensum catchment in eastern England with the aim of quantifying the long-term impacts of potential changes to agricultural management practices on river water quality. Calibration and validation were successfully performed at a daily time-step against observations of discharge, nitrate and total phosphorus obtained from high-frequency water quality monitoring within the Blackwater sub-catchment, covering an area of 19.6 km2. A variety of mitigation options were identified and modelled, both singly and in combination, and their long-term effects on nitrate and total phosphorus losses were quantified together with the 95% uncertainty range of model predictions. Results showed that introducing a red clover cover crop to the crop rotation scheme applied within the catchment reduced nitrate losses by 19.6%. Buffer strips of 2 m and 6 m width represented the most effective options to reduce total phosphorus losses, achieving reductions of 12.2% and 16.9%, respectively. This is one of the first studies to quantify the impacts of agricultural mitigation options on long-term water quality for nitrate and total phosphorus at a daily resolution, in addition to providing an estimate of the uncertainties of those impacts. The results highlighted the need to consider multiple pollutants, the degree of uncertainty associated with model predictions and the risk of unintended pollutant impacts when evaluating the effectiveness of mitigation options, and showed that high-frequency water quality datasets can be applied to robustly calibrate water quality models, creating DSTs that are more effective and reliable

A refined regional modeling approach for the Corn Belt – Experiences and recommendations for large-scale integrated modeling

Nonpoint source pollution from agriculture is the main source of nitrogen and phosphorus in the stream systems of the Corn Belt region in the Midwestern US. This region is comprised of two large river basins, the intensely row-cropped Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) and Ohio-Tennessee River Basin (OTRB), which are considered the key contributing areas for the Northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Thus, in this area it is of utmost importance to ensure that intensive agriculture for food, feed and biofuel production can coexist with a healthy water environment. To address these objectives within a river basin management context, an integrated modeling system has been constructed with the hydrologic Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, capable of estimating river basin responses to alternative cropping and/or management strategies. To improve modeling performance compared to previous studies and provide a spatially detailed basis for scenario development, this SWAT Corn Belt application incorporates a greatly refined subwatershed structure based on 12-digit hydrologic units or ‘subwatersheds’ as defined by the US Geological Service. The model setup, calibration and validation are time-demanding and challenging tasks for these large systems, given the scale intensive data requirements, and the need to ensure the reliability of flow and pollutant load predictions at multiple locations. Thus, the objectives of this study are both to comprehensively describe this large-scale modeling approach, providing estimates of pollution and crop production in the region as well as to present strengths and weaknesses of integrated modeling at such a large scale along with how it can be improved on the basis of the current modeling structure and results. The predictions were based on a semi-automatic hydrologic calibration approach for large-scale and spatially detailed modeling studies, with the use of the Sequential Uncertainty Fitting algorithm (SUFI-2) and the SWAT-CUP interface, followed by a manual water quality calibration on a monthly basis. The refined modeling approach developed in this study led to successful predictions across most parts of the Corn Belt region and can be used for testing pollution mitigation measures and agricultural economic scenarios, providing useful information to policy makers and recommendations on similar efforts at the regional scale.This article is from Journal of Hydrology 524 (2015): 348–366, doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.02.039.</p