Estimating the distributions of inorganic nutrients and total suspended solids induced by soil erosion in an agricultural mountainous area using a revised SWAT+ model
Wiktor Haleckia, Dawid Bedlab*
aInstitute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences, Mickiewicza 33, Kraków, 31–120 Poland
bUniversity of Agriculture in Krakow, Department of Ecology, Climatology and Air Protection al. Mickiewicza 21, 31-120 Krakow, Poland
*corresponding author:
E-mail address: dawid.bedla@urk.edu.pl
ABSTRACT
Processes involving surface water erosion are crucial to the functioning of ecological systems and river-scale management. However, these processes are not well understood at the regional and global levels, and forested agricultural catchments have undergone major degradation because soils in river valleys are continuously inundated with rainwater. Most Carpathian catchments, particularly those at lower elevations, are used for forest or agricultural purposes, which experience the leaching of inorganic nutrients and fluxes of total suspended sediments (TSS). The objective of the current study was to investigate the distribution of inorganic nutrients and TSS in waterways draining into flysch catchments by using a new SWAT+ tool. The highest concentrations of inorganic nutrients were recorded in the main watercourse and in the outflows from the catchments. Nevertheless, the same trend was not observed for the TSS concentrations. Moreover, statistically significant relationships were revealed between agricultural use and N-NO3- ion concentrations and between permanent grasslands and P- PO43- anions. The SWAT+ model can be a valuable tool for studying TSS distributions and inorganic nutrient leaching.
Keywords : spatial autoregression, mountain landscape, inorganic nutrient leaching, flysch catchments, hydraulic parameters