An approach to validate groundwater contamination risk in rural mountainous catchments: the role of lateral groundwater flows.

ABSTRACT: Computer models dedicated to the validation of groundwater contamination risk in the rural environment, namely the risk of contamination by nitrate leachates from agriculture fertilizers, are frequently based on direct comparison of risky areas (e.g., cropland, pastures used for livestock production) and spatial distributions of contaminant (nitrate) plumes. These methods are fated to fail where lateral flows dominate in the landscape (mountainous catchments) displacing the nitrate plumes downhill and from the risky spots. In these cases, there is no connection between the spatial location of risky areas and nitrate plumes, unless the two locations can be linked by a contaminant transport model. The main purpose of this paper is therefore to introduce a method whereby spatio-temporal links

SUBMITTER: Pacheco FAL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6249407 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature