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A Review of Effectiveness of Vegetative Buffers on Sediment Trapping in Agricultural Areas
Citation:
YUAN, Y., R. L. Bingner, AND M. A. Locke. A Review of Effectiveness of Vegetative Buffers on Sediment Trapping in Agricultural Areas. ECOHYDROLOGY AND HYDROBIOLOGY. Foreign Trade Enterprise Ars Polona, Warsaw, Poland, 2(3):321-336, (2009).
Impact/Purpose:
In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the importance of vegetative buffers in controlling nonpoint source pollution from agricultural fields. Vegetative buffers are strips of grass or stiff grass, trees or shrubs or combinations of grass and trees established at the edge of fields or along streams, ditches, wetlands or other water bodies. They are designed to slow terrestrial inputs of water, trap sediment, filter nutrients, and provide habitat and corridors for fish and wildlife including important pollinator species. Riparian (streamside) buffers between agricultural fields and streams play an important role in controlling the impacts of land use activities on water quality and aquatic ecosystems, and they have been studied for the enhancement of water quality through control of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution and protection of the stream environment (Lowrance et al., 1985; Lowrance et al., 1997; Lowrance et al., 2000; Lee et al., 1999; Hubbard and Lowrance, 1997). Riparian vegetation has well-known beneficial effects on bank stability, biological diversity, and water temperature of streams (Simon and Collsion, 2002; Lowrance et al., 1997; Sugden and Steiner, 2003; Harmel et al., 1999).
Description:
In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the importance of riparian buffers between agricultural fields and waterbodies. Riparian buffers play an important role in mitigating the impacts of land use activities on water quality and aquatic ecosystems. However, evaluating the effectiveness of riparian buffer systems on a watershed scale is complex, and watershed models have limited capabilities for simulating riparian buffer processes. Thus, the overall objective of this paper is to develop an understanding of riparian buffer processes towards water quality modeling/monitoring and nonpoint source pollution assessment. The paper provides a thorough review of relevant literature on the performance of vegetative buffers on sediment reduction. It was found that although sediment trapping capacities are site-specific and vegetation-specific, and many factors influence the sediment trapping efficiency, the width of a buffer is important in filtering agricultural runoff and wider buffers tended to trap more sediment. Sediment trapping efficiency is also affected by slope, but the overall relationship is not consistent among studies. Overall, sediment trapping efficiency did not vary by vegetation type and grass buffers and forest buffers have roughly the same sediment trapping efficiency. This analysis can be used as the basis for planning future studies on watershed scale simulation of riparian buffer systems, design of effective riparian buffers for nonpoint source pollution control or water quality restoration and design of riparian buffer monitoring programs in watersheds.