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Evaluating the impacts of sustainable land management practices on water quality in an agricultural catchment in Lower Austria using SWAT.

ABSTRACT: Managing agricultural watersheds in an environmentally friendly manner necessitate the strategic implementation of well-targeted sustainable land management (SLM) practices that limit soil and nonpoint source pollution losses and translocation. Watershed-scale SLM-scenario modeling has the potential to identify efficient and effective management strategies from the field to the integrated landscape level. In a case study targeting a 66-hectare watershed in Petzenkirchen, Lower Austria, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was utilized to evaluate a variety of locally adoptable SLM practices. SWAT was calibrated and validated (monthly) at the catchment outlet for flow, sediment, nitrate-nitrogen (NO₃-N), ammonium nitrogen (NH₄-N), and mineralized phosphorus (PO₄-P) using SWATplusR. Considering the locally existing agricultural practices and socioeconomic and environmental factors of the research area, four conservation practices were evaluated: baseline scenario, contour farming (CF), winter cover crops (CC), and a combination of no-till and cover crops (NT + CC). The NT + CC SLM practice was found to be the most effective soil conservation practice in reducing soil loss by around 80%, whereas CF obtained the best results for decreasing the nutrient loads of NO₃-N and PO₄-P by 11% and 35%, respectively. The findings of this study imply that the setup SWAT model can serve the context-specific performance assessment and eventual promotion of SLM interventions that mitigate on-site land degradation and the consequential off-site environmental pollution resulting from agricultural nonpoint sources.

SUBMITTER: Musyoka FK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10039844 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Evaluating the impacts of sustainable land management practices on water quality in an agricultural catchment in Lower Austria using SWAT.

Musyoka Francis Kilundu FK Strauss Peter P Zhao Guangju G Strohmeier Stefan S Mutua Benedict Mwavu BM Klik Andreas A

Environmental monitoring and assessment 20230325 4

Managing agricultural watersheds in an environmentally friendly manner necessitate the strategic implementation of well-targeted sustainable land management (SLM) practices that limit soil and nonpoint source pollution losses and translocation. Watershed-scale SLM-scenario modeling has the potential to identify efficient and effective management strategies from the field to the integrated landscape level. In a case study targeting a 66-hectare watershed in Petzenkirchen, Lower Austria, the Soil ...[more]

PMID: 36964829

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Project description:Kenya's catchments has both natural and disturbed environments. Within these environments, there has been interaction between hydrological, physical and ecological characteristics. Therefore, impacts of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) change on surface and sub - surface hydrology needs to be well understood due to the increasing population competing for scarce natural resources such as water, trees and forest land. The water balance components' spatial and temporal dynamics in relationship to the LULC change between 2003 and 2018 in the Lower Nzoia Sub - Catchment (LNSC) in Kenya was therefore assessed. Landsat data with 30 m (m) spatial resolution was used in understanding LULC dynamics of the study area using Supervised Classification Approach (Interactive Classification Method) in ArcGIS 10.5. After landsat image classification, key water balance components including; surface runoff (SURFQ), lateral flow (LATQ), groundwater recharge (BASEQ), deep acquifer recharge (DEEPQ), evapotranspiration (ET) and groundwater revap (REVAP) for years 2003 and 2018 were estimated using SWAT model in ArcSWAT. The overall accuracies for 2003 and 2018 classified images were 75.9% and 98.9% respectively which are showing good values. The results of the study showed that agricultural land coverage reduced from 83.1% in 2003 to 78.6% in 2018. Rangeland on the hand increased from 6.3% to 9.8% while urban/built - up area increasing from 10.6% to 11.6%. The annual water balance components from the LULC distribution of the two time periods shows that ET reduced, SURFQ increased, BASEQ reduced, DEEPQ reduced, LATQ reduced and REVAP reduced. At catchment level, results show that 2018 had a higher water balance than 2003 which can partly be explained by land cover decrease. The relationship between rainfall distribution, Land Surface Temperature (LST) and LULC change were further compared. At the same time, the study found out that there is limited focus to date on rural communities climate adaptive capacity. Hence, water institutions in the sub - catchment such as Water Resources Authority (WRA) are yet to fully mainstream adaptive capacity into their organizational structure and policies.

Dataset Information

Evaluating the impacts of sustainable land management practices on water quality in an agricultural catchment in Lower Austria using SWAT.

Publications

Evaluating the impacts of sustainable land management practices on water quality in an agricultural catchment in Lower Austria using SWAT.

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