Agricultural Land Use and Best Management Practices to Control Nonpoint Water Pollution |
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Authors: | Maria Nicoletta Ripa Antonio Leone Monica Garnier Antonio Lo Porto |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Environment and Forests Engineering Group, Tuscia University, DAF, via S.Camillo de Lellis, 01100, Viterbo, Italy;(2) Water Research Institute, National Research Council, via De Blasio 5, 70125, Bari, Italy |
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Abstract: | In recent years, improvements in point-source depuration technologies have highlighted the problems regarding agricultural
nonpoint (diffuse) sources, and this issue has become highly relevant from the environmental point of view. The considerable
extension of the areas responsible for this kind of pollution, together with the scarcity of funds available to local managers,
make minimizing the impacts of nonpoint sources on a whole basin a virtually impossible task. This article presents the results
of a study intended to pinpoint those agricultural areas, within a basin, that contribute most to water pollution, so that
operations aimed at preventing and/or reducing this kind of pollution can be focused on them. With this aim, an innovative
approach is presented that integrates a field-scale management model, a simple regression model, and a geographic information
system (GIS). The Lake Vico basin, where recent studies highlighted a considerable increase in the trophic state, mainly caused
by phosphorus (P) compounds deriving principally from the intensive cultivation of hazelnut trees in the lake basin, was chosen
as the study site. Using the management model Groundwater Loading Effects of Agricultural Management Systems (GLEAMS), the
consequences, in terms of sediment yield and phosphorus export, of hazelnut tree cultivation were estimated on different areas
of the basin with and without the application of a best management practice (BMP) that consists of growing meadow under the
trees. The GLEAMS results were successively extended to basin scale thanks to the application of a purposely designed regression
model and of a GIS.
The main conclusions can be summarized as follows: The effectiveness of the above-mentioned BMP is always greater for erosion
reduction than for particulate P reduction, whatever the slope value considered; moreover, the effectiveness with reference
to both particulate P and sediment yield production decreases as the slope increases. The proposed approach, being completely
distributed, represents a considerable step ahead compared to the semidistributed or lumped approaches, which are traditionally
employed in research into tools to support the decision-making process for land-use planning aimed at water pollution control. |
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Keywords: | Nonpoint water pollution Phosphorus Land management Best management practices Metamodels GIS |
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