Prediction methodology for contaminant transport from rangeland watersheds

Abstract

Weather on arid and semiarid lands can be extremely variable. Runoff is generally emphermeral, and high intensity, short-duration rainfall events are the major stimulus for runoff events. Transport of sediment and associated contaminants occurs with these infrequent events. Incorporation of variability in weather into any prediction technology is essential to provide accurate representations of climate-induced uncertainty in predictions of hydrologic response. The objective of this study is to investigate a method for including short-term climatic variations in analyses for contaminant transport from rangeland watersheds in arid/semiarid regions. Short term is defined here as a twenty to fifty time frame and it is assumed that lone term climatic fluctuations are not observed during this time. Also, most weather records are available for this time period; predictions of greater length are extrapolations of existing records unless corroborative data for longer term trends are collected. Predictions are being made with condensable uncertainty in the weather inputs even if the models for water, sediment, and contaminant transport are perfectly unknown. This study will incorporate uncertainty in weather inputs into the prediction process and address the ramifications of this uncertainty. Uncertainty introduced by improper model or parameter specification is only briefly addressed