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Author: Jamie T. Koch Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 279
Book Description
The increased use of both organic and synthetic fertilizers on agricultural land has lead to rising groundwater nitrate concentrations in some areas of southern Ontario. This has occurred at the Thornton Well Field in Oxford County, likely as a result of impacts from legacy agricultural activities in the area. In an attempt to mitigate the impact on water quality within the well field, the County purchased some of the agricultural land in the vicinity of the well field in 2001 with plans to reduce nutrient loading through the implementation of Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs). Since the initiation of the BMPs, the nitrogen application rates within the study site were reduced by 20 to 100% relative to historical rates. The objectives of this study were to provide a unique, five year data set which can assist in BMP development and provide direction for regional scale agricultural policy; evaluate the nitrate mass flux at numerous locations through the unsaturated zone beneath a BMP-activated agricultural field within a complex moraine environment; develop and compare various methods to upscale point measurements of mass flux to mass loading (t N03-N/yr) at the field and regional scale; evaluate standardized methods of assessing aquifer vulnerability and compare results within the context of non-point source agricultural contaminants at the field and regional scale; and determine whether monitoring water levels and temperature within monitoring wells is able to aid in evaluating vulnerability to surface contaminants.
Author: Jamie T. Koch Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 279
Book Description
The increased use of both organic and synthetic fertilizers on agricultural land has lead to rising groundwater nitrate concentrations in some areas of southern Ontario. This has occurred at the Thornton Well Field in Oxford County, likely as a result of impacts from legacy agricultural activities in the area. In an attempt to mitigate the impact on water quality within the well field, the County purchased some of the agricultural land in the vicinity of the well field in 2001 with plans to reduce nutrient loading through the implementation of Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs). Since the initiation of the BMPs, the nitrogen application rates within the study site were reduced by 20 to 100% relative to historical rates. The objectives of this study were to provide a unique, five year data set which can assist in BMP development and provide direction for regional scale agricultural policy; evaluate the nitrate mass flux at numerous locations through the unsaturated zone beneath a BMP-activated agricultural field within a complex moraine environment; develop and compare various methods to upscale point measurements of mass flux to mass loading (t N03-N/yr) at the field and regional scale; evaluate standardized methods of assessing aquifer vulnerability and compare results within the context of non-point source agricultural contaminants at the field and regional scale; and determine whether monitoring water levels and temperature within monitoring wells is able to aid in evaluating vulnerability to surface contaminants.
Author: Kyle C. Fredrick Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 133
Book Description
Ground water modeling allows for the understanding and evaluation of this valuable resource. Modeling tools and methods continually evolve and improve. This project was designed to assist in the development of new tools to integrate a geographic information system (GIS) with analytic element modeling (AEM). Over the course of this research, ground water models were developed using a more systematic approach than conventional methods have historically used. The first project utilized a simple ground water model to create a layer in an indexing model for evaluating ground water vulnerability to pollution. A depth to water map was created to augment a previous indexing scheme for the Ischua Creek Watershed in southern New York State to improve the characterization of the ground water system. The second project demonstrated the use of unconventional data for calibration of a ground water model. The model incorporated surface water elevations from seepage lakes and wetlands as ground water observations for calibration of hydraulic conductivity of a surficial aquifer system in the Northern Highland Lakes Region of Wisconsin (NHLR). The final project used a GIS extension for AEM modeling to determine how model element simplification effects calibration results based on different calibration targets. A model of the NHLR at varying degrees of resolution in terms of hydrologic boundaries and hydraulic conductivity zones was calibrated to head, travel time, and flux. Calibration results indicate, and are supported by AICc statistics, that ground water models are more sensitive to simplification of hydrologic boundaries than the number of hydraulic conductivity zones.
Author: Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 46
Book Description
Environment Canada, in cooperation with Agriculture Canada, is leading a five-year study to determine the environmental behaviour of pesticides and nitrates in the climatic, physiographic and soil conditions found in the Atlantic Region. One of the goals of the project is to gain knowledge on agricultural practices that can be applied to avoid unacceptable contamination of ground water by pesticides and fertilizers. Although the focus of research is on ground water and the potential impact of applied pesticides and fertilizers, it is necessary to understand the overall hydrologic cycle as it occurs on and around Sheffield Farm, located five km north of the Kentville Agriculture Experimental Station in Nova Scotia. This report provides the results of a regional water balance, conducted monthly, of the Sheffield Farm study area, based on the best information (hydrometric and climatic) available and describes the study area and climate, the water balance model, data availability, and the analysis.
Author: Tara Forstner Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Groundwater is considered a reliable resource, relatively insensitive to seasonal or even multi-year climatic variation, however quantifying aquifer-scale estimates of stress in diverse hydrologic environments is particularly difficult due to data scarcity and the limited number of techniques in deriving stress parameters, such as use and availability, which can be applied over a large spatial area. The scope of this project is to derive aquifer-scale estimates of annual volumes for groundwater withdrawal, recharge, and groundwater's contribution to environmental flows as a means to provide screening level estimates of aquifer-scale stress using the groundwater footprint. British Columbia (BC) has mapped and classified more than 1100 aquifers, but the level of development for each aquifer has always been subjectively based on well density or the anecdotal knowledge of groundwater use. Sectoral groundwater use is critical for local regions and aquifer-scale groundwater stress studies which are significantly impacted by changes in the groundwater use nominator. Results suggest that BC uses a total of ~562 million cubic meters of groundwater annually. The largest annual groundwater use by major sectors is agriculture (38%), finfish aquaculture (21%), industrial (16%), municipal water distribution systems (15%), and domestic private well users (11%). Estimating recharge uses multi-scale methods to examine the recharge mechanisms and provide a more reliable recharge estimate in complex mountainous terrain. Local-scale recharge was estimated using the water table fluctuation (WTF) method outlined by Cuthbert (2014). Aquifer-scale recharge was quantified using a quasi-2D water balance model and generalized aquifer parameters of soil and aquifer material, regional climate, and water table depth. Regional scale aquifer recharge was attributed the areal average recharge flux modelled by the global hydrologic model, PCR-GLOBWB. Results show that generally recharge predictably varies with precipitation and that the average recharge is 791 mm for the local-scale method, 462 mm (32% of precipitation) for the aquifer-scale and 393 mm (33%) for the global hydrologic model. This study estimates groundwater's contribution to environmental flows across the province for this first time using two separate approaches. The first approach uses the groundwater presumptive standard, which is a general standard for managing groundwater pumping. The second method introduces a novel approach for estimating the contribution of groundwater to environmental flows using the existing environmental flow needs framework and an understanding of low flow zone hydrology. In general, both methods show larger contributions from groundwater to environmental flows in the Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island compared to the Interior. For each aquifer, the groundwater footprint (expressed as the unitless ratio of groundwater footprint to aquifer area) is calculated four times; using results from each of the two methods used to estimate recharge and each of the two methods used to estimate the groundwater contribution to environmental flows. Of the unconfined aquifers (n = 404) in the province, 43 aquifers (11%) are stressed with high certainty, 32 aquifers (8%) are stressed with low certainty, 296 aquifers (70%) are less stressed, and 29 aquifers (11%) were not included due to missing parameters or issues where modelled recharge was less than environmental flows.
Author: Samuel Jakobus Mostert Publisher: ISBN: Category : GIS. Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
Groundwater resources play a vital role in the sustainability of a vast majority of communities world-wide. Various anthropogenic activities (particularly related to agriculture, mining, and other diffuse and point sources of contamination), however, pose a significant threat to the quality of groundwater resources. Once contaminants reach the aquifer, the mitigation thereof becomes expensive and often not readily possible. A proactive approach to the assessment of aquifer vulnerability to contamination, rather than a reactive approach, is thus of utmost importance for the future sustainability of our groundwater resources. This dissertation deals with the assessment of aquifer vulnerability in the Rustenburg Municipality, South Africa. The assessment of aquifer vulnerability is conducted using a well-known vulnerability index called DRASTIC within a geographical information system (GIS) environment. DRASTIC is an acronym for a set of parameters that characterize the hydrogeological setting and combined evaluated aquifer vulnerability; viz.: Depth to water level, Nett Recharge, Aquifer media, Soil media, Topography, Impact of the vadose zone, and Hydraulic Conductivity. An additional objective is to adapt the current DRASTIC model to account for the potential influence of land surface uses on groundwater resources through the incorporation of land use as a vulnerability factor. The final vulnerability map shows that the highest vulnerability aquifer rating fell within the range of moderately high vulnerable (7-8) and the addition of the land use variable did not change the highest vulnerability rating. The spatial distribution of the moderately high vulnerable areas, however, was found to vary significantly with incorporation of the land use parameter. GIS proved great compatibility with an aquifer vulnerability model such as DRASTIC.
Author: Jamie T. Koch
Author: Jamie T. Koch
Author: Wayne A. Pettyjohn
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Author: Kyle C. Fredrick
Author: Wayne A. Pettyjohn
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Author: Tara Forstner
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Author: Thomas Henry DeLuca
Author: Samuel Jakobus Mostert