You are here:
The Potential Importance of Conservation, Restoration and Altered Management Practices for Water Quality in the Wabash River Watershed
Citation:
Yang, G., Elly Best, AND S. Goodwin. The Potential Importance of Conservation, Restoration and Altered Management Practices for Water Quality in the Wabash River Watershed. Presented at American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2013 Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 09 - 13, 2013.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public
Description:
The Potential Importance of Conservation, Restoration and Altered Management Practices for Water Quality in the Wabash River Watershed Guoxiang Yang1, Elly P.H. Best2, Staci Goodwin3 1 ORISE Postdoc Research Associate at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL), Water Supply and Water Resources Division (WSWRD), Water Quality Management Branch (WQMB), 26 W M.L. King Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45268; 2 U.S. EPA, NRMRL, WSWRD, WQMB, 26 W M.L. King Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45268; 3 Indiana Department of Environmental Management, Office of Water Quality, Indianapolis, IN 46204 Non-point source (NPS) pollution is one of the leading causes of water quality impairment within the United States. Conservation, restoration and altered management (CRAM) practices may effectively reduce NPS pollutants to receiving water bodies and enhance local and regional ecosystem services. Barriers for the implementation of CRAM include uncertainties related to the extent to which nutrients are removed by CRAM at various spatial and temporal scales, longevity, optimal placement of CRAM within the landscape, and implementation / operation / maintenance costs. We conducted a study aimed at the identification of optimal placement of CRAM in watersheds that reduces N loading to an environmentally sustainable level, at an acceptable, known, cost. For this study, we used a recently developed screening-level modeling approach, WQM-TMDL-N, running in the ArcGIS environment, to estimate nitrogen loading under current land use conditions (NLCD 2006). This model was equipped with a new option to explore the performances of placement of various CRAM types and areas to reduce nitrogen loading to a State-accepted Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) standard, with related annual average TN concentration, and a multi-objective algorithm optimizing load and cost. CRAM practices explored for implementation in rural area included buffer strips, nutrient management practices, and wetland restoration. We initially applied this modeling approach to the Tippecanoe River (TR) watershed (8-digit HUC), a headwater of the Wabash River (WR) watershed, where CRAM implementation in rural and urban areas is being planned and implemented at various spatial scales. Consequences of future land use are explored using a 2050 land use/land cover map forecasted by the Land Transformation Model. The WR watershed, IN, drains two-thirds of the state’s 92 counties and supports predominantly agricultural land use. Because the WR accounts for over 40% of the nutrient loads of the Ohio River and significantly contributes to the anoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), reduction in TN loading of the WR are expected to directly benefit downstream ecosystem services, including fisheries in the GOM. This modeling approach can be used in support of sustainable integrated watershed management planning. Presentation in Session ‘B037. Linking Landscape and Watershed Processes with Aquatic Ecosystem Functions, Services, and Sustainability’, American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2013 Fall Meeting, 9-13 December 2013, San Francisco, California
