Three essays on phosphorus runoff and water quality

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Seungyub Lee

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Water pollution caused by nutrients, and the resulting eutrophication, have increased over time. This water pollution is increasingly caused by non-point source pollution, both nutrients and erosion. Controlling non-point pollution is important for water quality. However, non-point source pollution is not easy to track and control. In this case, management efforts can be solutions for these environmental issues in both urban and agricultural areas. In this dissertation, I focus on phosphorous (P) fertilizer because P is the limiting nutrient in freshwater systems. If we can reduce P runoff from urban and agricultural non-point sources, water quality can be improved. ... By analyzing national water quality and political economy data and by investigating a national survey of soybean producers, this dissertation found implications to increase adoption of environmentally friendly policies and practices. Solving this problem will require efforts to limit both residential and agricultural nonpoint source pollution. The results could be helpful policy makers to target specific regions to initiate environmental policies and extension efforts for designing educational programs to increase adoption rate as well as environmental quality.

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 14463-14493
Author(s):  
B. B. Huang ◽  
D. H. Yan ◽  
H. Wang ◽  
B. F. Cheng ◽  
X. H. Cui

Abstract. Under the background of climate change and human's activities, there has been presenting an increase both in the frequency of droughts and the range of their impacts. Droughts may give rise to a series of resources, environmental and ecological effects, i.e. water shortage, water quality deterioration as well as the decrease in the diversity of aquatic organisms. This paper, above all, identifies the impact mechanism of drought on the surface water quality of the basin, and then systematically studies the laws of generation, transfer, transformation and degradation of pollutants during the drought, finding out that the alternating droughts and floods stage is the critical period during which the surface water quality is affected. Secondly, through employing indoor orthogonality experiments, serving drought degree, rainfall intensity and rainfall duration as the main elements and designing various scenario models, the study inspects the effects of various factors on the nitrogen loss in soil as well as the loss of non-point sources pollution and the leaching rate of nitrogen under the different alternating scenarios of drought and flood. It comes to the conclusion that the various factors and the loss of non-point source pollution are positively correlated, and under the alternating scenarios of drought and flood, there is an exacerbation in the loss of ammonium nitrogen and nitrate nitrogen in soil, which generates the transfer and transformation mechanisms of non-point source pollution from a micro level. Finally, by employing the data of Nenjiang river basin, the paper assesses the impacts of drought on the surface water quality from a macro level.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 1955
Author(s):  
Mingxi Zhang ◽  
Guangzhi Rong ◽  
Aru Han ◽  
Dao Riao ◽  
Xingpeng Liu ◽  
...  

Land use change is an important driving force factor affecting the river water environment and directly affecting water quality. To analyze the impact of land use change on water quality change, this study first analyzed the land use change index of the study area. Then, the study area was divided into three subzones based on surface runoff. The relationship between the characteristics of land use change and the water quality grade was obtained by grey correlation analysis. The results showed that the land use types changed significantly in the study area since 2000, and water body and forest land were the two land types with the most significant changes. The transfer rate is cultivated field > forest land > construction land > grassland > unused land > water body. The entropy value of land use information is represented as Area I > Area III > Area II. The shift range of gravity center is forest land > grassland > water body > unused land > construction land > cultivated field. There is a strong correlation between land use change index and water quality, which can be improved and managed by changing the land use type. It is necessary to establish ecological protection areas or functional areas in Area I, artificial lawns or plantations shall be built in the river around the water body to intercept pollutants from non-point source pollution in Area II, and scientific and rational farming in the lower reaches of rivers can reduce non-point source pollution caused by farming.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 6247-6261
Author(s):  
Xiaoqing Liu ◽  
Juanfen Wang

As water pollution is more and more serious, ArcGIS is proposed to explore the impact of environmental and ecological factors on water. Taking the river water quality as the research object, this paper simulates and analyzes the endogenous and non-point source pollution and water quality through indoor physical model experiment, hydrological and water quality numerical model and water quality numerical model, and analyzes the impact of different environmental changes on river water quality and pollution sources from micro and macro perspectives. The main contents include: experimental study on the influence mechanism of overlying water velocity, disturbance and water temperature on sediment endogenous release, construction and simulation of watershed non-point source pollution model, construction and simulation of watershed river water quality model, as well as the impact of environmental change on river water quality and quantitative analysis of river pollution sources.


2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Kinzelman ◽  
Sandra L. McLellan ◽  
Annette D. Daniels ◽  
Susan Cashin ◽  
Ajaib Singh ◽  
...  

Racine, Wisconsin, located on Lake Michigan, experiences frequent recreational water quality advisories in the absence of any identifiable point source of pollution. This research examines the environmental distribution of Escherichia coli in conjunction with the assessment of additional parameters (rainfall, turbidity, wave height, wind direction, wind speed and algal presence) in order to determine the most probable factors that influence E. coli levels in surface waters. Densities of E. coli were highest in core samples taken from foreshore sands, often exceeding an order of magnitude greater than those collected from submerged sands and water. Simple regression and multivariate analyses conducted on supplementary environmental data indicate that the previous day's E. coli concentration in conjunction with wave height is significantly predictive for present-time E. coli concentration. Genetic fingerprinting using repetitive element anchored PCR and cellular fatty acid analysis were employed to assess the presence of clonal isolates which indicate replication from a common parent cell. There were relatively few occurrences of clonal patterns in isolates collected from water, foreshore and submerged sands, suggesting that accumulation of E. coli, rather than environmental replication, was occurring in this system. Non-point source pollution, namely transport of accumulated E. coli from foreshore sands to surface waters via wave action, was found to be a major contributor to poor recreational water quality at the Lake Michigan beaches involved in this study.


2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (7) ◽  
pp. 181-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Fujioka

The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have established recreational water quality standards limiting the concentrations of faecal indicator bacteria (faecal coliform, E. coli, enterococci) to ensure that these waters are safe for swimming. In the application of these hygienic water quality standards, it is assumed that there are no significant environmental sources of these faecal indicator bacteria which are unrelated to direct faecal contamination. However, we previously reported that these faecal indicator bacteria are able to grow in the soil environment of humid tropical island environments such as Hawaii and Guam and are transported at high concentrations into streams and storm drains by rain. Thus, streams and storm drains in Hawaii contain consistently high concentrations of faecal indicator bacteria which routinely exceed the EPA and WHO recreational water quality standards. Since, streams and storm drains eventually flow out to coastal marine waters, we hypothesize that all the coastal beaches which receive run-off from streams and storm drains will contain elevated concentrations of faecal indicator bacteria. To test this hypothesis, we monitored the coastal waters at four beaches known to receive water from stream or storm drains for salinity, turbidity, and used the two faecal indicator bacteria (E. coli, enterococci) to establish recreational water quality standards. To determine if these coastal waters are contaminated with non-point source pollution (streams) or with point source pollution (sewage effluent), these same water samples were also assayed for spore-forming bacteria of faecal origin (Cl. perfringens) and of soil origin (Bacillus species). Using this monitoring strategy it was possible to determine when coastal marine waters were contaminated with non-point source pollution and when coastal waters were contaminated with point source pollution. The results of this study are most likely applicable to all countries in the warm and humid region of the world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 2767-2779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gyumin Lee ◽  
Kyung Soo Jun ◽  
Minji Kang

Abstract. This study aimed to develop a risk-based approach for determining control areas to manage non-point source pollution, developing a framework to prioritize catchments by considering the characteristics of polluted runoff from non-point sources. The best management, decision-making, and scientific approaches, such as the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and the Delphi technique, are required for the designation of control areas and the application of the best management practices to the control areas. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods can handle the diversity and complexity of non-point source pollution. The Delphi technique was employed for selecting the assessment criteria/sub-criteria and determining their weights. Sub-criteria for each catchment unit were scored with either a quantitative or qualitative scale. All non-point pollution sources in mainland Republic of Korea were included, with the exception of a few islands, with catchment prioritization and pollution vulnerability evaluations shown as thematic maps. This study contributes to the field by developing a new risk-based approach for ranking and prioritizing catchments; this provides valuable information for the Ministry of Environment to use to identify control areas and manage non-point source pollution.


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