A modelling framework to simulate river flow and pesticide loss via preferential flow at the catchment scale

Martha Lucia Villamizar Velez; Colin David Brown

doi:10.1016/j.catena.2016.09.009

A modelling framework to simulate river flow and pesticide loss via preferential flow at the catchment scale

Martha Lucia Villamizar Velez, Colin David Brown

Environment and Geography

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

A modelling framework with field-scale models including the preferential flow model MACRO was developed to simulate transport of six contrasting herbicides in a 650 km2 catchment in eastern England. The catchment scale model SPIDER was also used for comparison. The catchment system was successfully simulated as the sum of multiple field-scale processes with little impact of in-stream processes on simulations. Preferential flow was predicted to be the main driver of pesticide transport in the catchment. A satisfactory simulation of the flow was achieved (Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiencies of 0.56 and 0.34 for MACRO and SPIDER, respectively) but differences between pesticide simulations were observed due to uncertainties in pesticide properties and application details. Uncertainty analyses were carried out to assess input parameters reported as sensitive including pesticide sorption, degradation and application dates; their impact on simulations was chemical-specific. The simulation of pesticide concentrations in the river during low flow periods was very sensitive to uncertainty from rain gauge measurements and the estimation of evapotranspiration.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	120-130
Number of pages	11
Journal	Catena
Volume	149
Issue number	1
Early online date	17 Sept 2016
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2016.09.009
Publication status	Published - Feb 2017

Bibliographical note

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

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10.1016/j.catena.2016.09.009

Villamizar & Brown 2016 Wensum catchment model
© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.
Accepted author manuscript, 2.07 MB

Cite this

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title = "A modelling framework to simulate river flow and pesticide loss via preferential flow at the catchment scale",

abstract = "A modelling framework with field-scale models including the preferential flow model MACRO was developed to simulate transport of six contrasting herbicides in a 650 km2 catchment in eastern England. The catchment scale model SPIDER was also used for comparison. The catchment system was successfully simulated as the sum of multiple field-scale processes with little impact of in-stream processes on simulations. Preferential flow was predicted to be the main driver of pesticide transport in the catchment. A satisfactory simulation of the flow was achieved (Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiencies of 0.56 and 0.34 for MACRO and SPIDER, respectively) but differences between pesticide simulations were observed due to uncertainties in pesticide properties and application details. Uncertainty analyses were carried out to assess input parameters reported as sensitive including pesticide sorption, degradation and application dates; their impact on simulations was chemical-specific. The simulation of pesticide concentrations in the river during low flow periods was very sensitive to uncertainty from rain gauge measurements and the estimation of evapotranspiration.",

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