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MODELING NUTRIENT LOADS AND RESPONSE IN RIVER AND ESTUARY SYSTEMS
Citation:
Russo, R C. AND R. Lekevicius. MODELING NUTRIENT LOADS AND RESPONSE IN RIVER AND ESTUARY SYSTEMS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 2003.
Impact/Purpose:
Improve the scientific understanding of the processes controlling nutrient distributions in surface waters. Produce a suite of enhanced models for characterizing nutrient distributions in surface waters by incorporating improved process understanding in existing models (e.g., WASP), by developing new models (e.g., WHAM, reactive transport), and improving linkages between model components.
Description:
This Pilot Study was proposed by the United States and approved at the Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society's (CCMS) plenary session 27-31 March 1999 in Brussels. The proposal was finalized on 12 April 1999. The pilot study intended to address a major and widespread aquatic environmental problem arising from an over-abundance of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus) from both point sources, such as municipal sewage, and nonpoint sources, such as agricultural runoff. Excessive nutrient inputs into a water body induce biological, chemical and physical changes in aquatic plant and animal communities, often leading to oxygen depletion. During the Pilot Study, research was conducted to develop additional fundamental scientific knowledge of the effects of nitrogenous pollutants, and to develop and adapt water quality models for nutrients (especially nitrogen), calibrate and test them with field water sampling data, improve and upgrade them, and apply them to specific riverine-estuarine systems, and potentially lake systems, for evaluation and refining. In some cases field sampling and analysis were carried out specifically for the purposes of this study; in others, available data were used. The scientific information and modeling tools will be provided to all interested NATO and EAPC (Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council) countries for their use in application to similar water quality problems in river-estuary systems. The results of this study provide scientific information and predictive models, based on laboratory studies and field sampling and analysis. Such information and modeling tools are important to the development of environmentally protective and economically feasible water quality management activities.