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Evaluating Phosphorus Loss for Watershed Management: Integrating a Weighting Scheme of Watershed Heterogeneity into Export Coefficient Model

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Abstract

The identification of critical source areas (CSAs) and critical source periods (CSPs) are essential prerequisites for cost-effective practices of non-point source (NPS) pollution control. A simple empirical tool combining Export Coefficient Model (ECM) and a Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based weighting scheme of watershed heterogeneity was proposed to estimate annual and monthly phosphorus loss, to identify critical source areas and periods, and to assess pollution control practices. The GIS-based weighting scheme was developed to represent the transport potential of runoff to move phosphorus from the land surfaces to waters, as a supplement to the source-based ECM. The empirical tool was applied to the Dianchi Lake watershed of China. The results showed that the total phosphorus loss from NPS in 2008 was 352.3 tons. The agricultural land was recognized as the largest and the most spatially various source type. The lakeside plain and the terraces of the watershed were identified as CSAs, which generated more than 90 % of non-point phosphorus. The early part of wet season (from May to August) was the CSPs, when about 70 % of non-point phosphorus was lost. The reduction of phosphorus fertilizers and the vegetated buffer strips (VBS) were effective in controlling phosphorus loss from NPS in the watershed. A reduction of 20 % in phosphorus fertilizer application combined with the set-up of VBS in both riparian area of the main watercourses and the lakeside areas would decrease 25 % of phosphorus loss.

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Acknowledgments

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41471433 and 41001333); the Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund (2014-37); the Youth Chenguang Project of Science and Technology of Wuhan City (201150431072); and Hubei Province Natural Science Foundation of China (2011CDB404).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Environment and Disaster Monitoring and Evaluation of Hubei, Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430077, People’s Republic of China

    Sisi Li, Liang Zhang, Yun Du & Yanhua Zhuang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

    Sisi Li

  3. Key Laboratory of Nonpoint Source Pollution Control, Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing, 100081, People’s Republic of China

    Hongbin Liu

  4. Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, People’s Republic of China

    Hongbin Liu

  5. Kunming Institute of Environmental Science, Kunming, 650032, People’s Republic of China

    Shuzhi Liu

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  1. Sisi Li
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Correspondence to Liang Zhang or Hongbin Liu.

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Li, S., Zhang, L., Du, Y. et al. Evaluating Phosphorus Loss for Watershed Management: Integrating a Weighting Scheme of Watershed Heterogeneity into Export Coefficient Model. Environ Model Assess 21, 657–668 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10666-016-9499-1

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