| Abstract: | A multi-tier approach for agricultural watershed management has been proposed. The approach involves identification of a watershed management issue/problem, selection or development of simple conceptual model suitable for the exploration of the issue/problem identified and appropriate to the database available, and application of the model the address the identified issue/problem. The procedure is repeated by increasing the complexity in the conceptual model until the identified issue/problem has been addressed satisfactorily. An application of the procedure to an example watershed in southern Ontario conditions is shown. The application example has revealed that for identification of temporal pattern of runoff and sediment loads a simple conceptual model is adequate. For identification of spatial location of the sediment source areas and for the development of a monitoring program for the evaluation of remedial strategies a more complex distributed agricultural watershed model is necessary. |
