The worldwide economic downturn and the climate change in the beginning of 21st century have stressed the need for cost efficient and systematic operations model for the monitoring and management of ...surface waters. However, these processes are still all too fragmented and incapable to respond these challenges. For example in Finland, the estimation of the costs and benefits of planned management measures is insufficient. On this account, we present a new operations model to streamline these processes and to ensure the lucid decision making and the coherent implementation which facilitate the participation of public and all the involved stakeholders. The model was demonstrated in the real world management of a lake. The benefits, pitfalls and development needs were identified. After the demonstration, the operations model was put into operation and has been actively used in several other management projects throughout Finland.
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•Ecological and economic efficiency of river basin management measures need to be evaluated•Operational model need to be more effectively automated and integrated•The web-based map services are useful for the participatory management•Consultancy services for end users ought to be tailored and provided.•More emphasis should be placed on the estimation of the economic benefits
We examine how nutrient load compensation could help a firm expand its production when production is a source of nutrient loads, threatening the ecological status of a water body. We ask whether ...compensation is technically feasible and whether it can be made in an ecologically sustainable way. Credits for compensation may be provided by point or nonpoint sources. We apply our approach to the case of Finnish Lake Kallavesi, where the Supreme Administrative Court, based on the Water Framework Directive, refused an environmental permit for a plan to build a large pulp mill. We employ a lake nutrient response model to determine water quality using probabilistic analysis of the ecological status of the lake. The supply potential of phosphorus credits from point sources was too low to keep the lake in good ecological status with at least 80% probability and must be complemented by credits from agricultural nonpoint sources. Using a trade ratio of 1:1.2 to reflect uncertainty on credits from nonpoint sources suggests that the reduction in agricultural phosphorus loading would suffice on its own to ensure the good ecological status by 90% probability. The cost of buying nutrient reduction credits would be at most 2% of the investment.
•Water Framework Directive prevents economic activities threatening water quality.•Nutrient load compensation provides a cost-efficient solution for new activities.•Required compensation depends on acceptable risk of not achieving quality targets.•Ecologically sound compensation accounts for uncertainties and actual reduction.•Compensations enable economic growth and maintenance of environmental quality.
This paper introduces a framework for extending global climate and socioeconomic scenarios in order to study agricultural nutrient pollution on an individual catchment scale. Our framework builds on ...and extends Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) at the spatial and temporal scales that are relevant for the drivers of animal husbandry, manure recycling and the application of inorganic fertilisers in crop production. Our case study area is the Aura river catchment in South-West Finland, which discharges into the heavily eutrophic Baltic Sea. The Aura river catchment has intensive agriculture — both livestock and crop production. Locally adjusted and interpreted climate and socioeconomic scenarios were used as inputs to a field-level economic optimisation in order to study how farmers might react to the changing markets and climate conditions under different SSPs. The results on economically optimal fertilisation levels were then used as inputs to the spatially and temporally explicit nutrient loading model (VEMALA). Alternative manure recycling strategies that matched with SSP narratives were studied as means to reduce the phosphorus (P) overfertilisation in areas with high livestock density. According to our simulations, on average the P loads increased by 18% during 2071–2100 from the current level and the variation in P loads between scenarios was large (from −14% to +50%). By contrast, the nitrogen (N) loads had decreased on average by −9% (with variation from −20% to +3%) by the end of the current century. Phosphorus loading was most sensitive to manure recycling strategies and the speed of climate change. Nitrogen loading was less sensitive to changes in climate and socioeconomic drivers.
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•The combined effect of climate and agricultural change affects nutrient loading•Phosphorus loading can be reduced by decreasing overfertilisation in livestock-rich areas•With optimal fertilisation inputs, nitrogen loading can see a slight decrease
Climate change is expected to increase annual and especially winter runoff, shorten the snow cover period and therefore increase both nutrient leaching from agricultural areas and natural background ...leaching in the Baltic Sea catchment. We estimated the effects of climate change and possible future scenarios of agricultural changes on the phosphorus and nitrogen loading to the Baltic Sea from Finnish catchments. In the agricultural scenarios we assumed that the prices of agricultural products are among the primary drivers in the adaptation to climate change, as they affect the level of fertilization and the production intensity and volume and, hence, the modeled changes in gross nutrient loading from agricultural land. Optimal adaptation may increase production while supporting appropriate use of fertilization, resulting in low nutrient balance in the fields. However, a less optimal adaptation may result in higher nutrient balance and increased leaching. The changes in nutrient loading to the Baltic Sea were predicted by taking into account the agricultural scenarios in a nutrient loading model for Finnish catchments (VEMALA), which simulates runoff, nutrient processes, leaching and transport on land, in rivers and in lakes. We thus integrated the effects of climate change in the agricultural sector, nutrient loading in fields, natural background loading, hydrology and nutrient transport and retention processes.
•Climate change is expected to increase winter runoff and slightly increase the annual runoff sum.•Climate change is expected to affect crop growth, level of fertilization and production intensity.•Combined climate and agricultural changes are expected to increase nitrogen and phosphorus loading to the Baltic Sea.•Higher yields are needed for reducing nutrient balances, and more land should be allocated to water protection programs.
Our objective is to understand the effectiveness of local and international nutrient pollution mitigation efforts when targeting better water quality in the region’s coastal waters. To this end, we ...developed an integrated modeling framework for the Archipelago Sea located in the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe, conducted what-if analyses for various ambition levels of nutrient abatement, and studied the long-term consequences at the sea basin scale. We demonstrate that in outer parts of the Archipelago Sea, a good eutrophication status can be achieved if the current internationally agreed policy goals for nutrient abatement are successfully met. In inner coastal areas, current goals for phytoplankton biomass could be reached only through extreme mitigation efforts in all polluting sectors and large-scale application of yet poorly tested ecological engineering methods. This result calls for carefully considering the relevance of current threshold values for phytoplankton and its role as a dominant indicator of good ecological status.
•Modelling of bioavailable nitrogen and phosphorus loading to the Archipelago Sea.•Phosphate represents 15–55% (average: 38%) of the total phosphorus load.•Inorganic nitrogen represents 35–85% ...(average: 77%) of the total nitrogen load.
The water quality model VEMALA v.3 reconciles the complexity of a freshwater ecosystem model with the terrestrial and marine ecosystem models already implemented in Finland. This model unifies VEMALA-ICECREAM, VEMALA-N and VEMALA 1.1 as it uses their independent terrestrial loading and implements a simplification of the biogeochemical model RIVE and phytoplankton model AQUAPHY in the river network. VEMALA v.3 simulates the transport and transformations of nitrate, ammonium, organic nitrogen, phosphate, particulate inorganic phosphorus, organic phosphorus, phytoplankton, suspended sediments and total organic carbon during their travel to the sea. The model’s results were satisfactory in the Aurajoki river basin (South-Western Finland) in simulating nutrients daily loads, with all Nash and Sutcliffe coefficients (NSE) ranging from 0.51 to 0.89 against observations, and monthly loads (NSE=0.4–0.97 against estimations). Simulations of total nitrogen and total phosphorus loads were comparable to estimated annual loads with the exception of a few exceptional years. The quantification of the nutrient cycling river processes were consistent with the Aurajoki river ecosystem with maximum summer rates for mineralisation 0.1mgCL−1d−1 and denitrification 55mgNm−2d−1 resulting in a loss of 4% of the annual nitrogen load entering the river. VEMALA v.3 unites the previous versions of VEMALA to better predict the co-impact of dissolved inorganic nitrogen and phosphate on algal growth and therefore eutrophication. Simulation of bioavailable nutrients rather than total nutrients will allow the distinction in the quality of the various loading sources, farming actions and loading reduction actions. In the Aurajoki simulation, nitrate and ammonium represented on average 74% and 3% respectively of the total nitrogen load to the Baltic Sea, while phosphate constituted 38% of the total phosphorus load to the sea. Thus, the biological impact in the river and the sea will be better assessed to help water managers implement the Water Framework Directive in Finland.
How to model algal blooms in any lake on earth Janssen, Annette BG; Janse, Jan H; Beusen, Arthur HW ...
Current opinion in environmental sustainability,
02/2019, Letnik:
36
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
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•Reaching SDG 6 requires algal projection models applicable at a global scale.•There are currently no algal projection models similar to the ideal model.•Scientific challenges relate ...to spatial scales, data availability and uncertainty.•Recent developments provide opportunities for further development.•Global algal projection models will be highly relevant to global policymaking.
Algal blooms increasingly threaten lake and reservoir water quality at the global scale, caused by ongoing climate change and nutrient loading. To anticipate these algal blooms, models to project future algal blooms worldwide are required. Here we present the state-of-the-art in algal projection modelling and explore the requirements of an ideal algal projection model. Based on this, we identify current challenges and opportunities for such model development. Since most building blocks are present, we foresee that algal projection models for any lake on earth can be developed in the near future. Finally, we think that algal bloom projection models at a global scale will provide a valuable contribution to global policymaking, in particular with respect to SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation).
We applied a process-based nutrient loading model (VEMALA v.3) into two cold region watersheds and evaluated the simulations against daily observations of nitrate‑nitrogen (NO3-N) concentrations and ...fluxes over a five-year period. The high-frequency NO3-N and water level data revealed fine temporal changes of NO3-N losses from agricultural and mixed land-use catchments and enabled the detection of processes to be further developed in the model. The NO3-N loads were simulated satisfactorily in the agricultural headwater catchment, as the percent bias (PBIAS) was annually within ±27%.The results showed that the annual NO3-N loads were better simulated (PBIAS ≤ ±16%) at the larger scale catchment despite the input data for the model being less detailed. Intra-annually, the simulated NO3-N concentrations and loads during snowmelt and autumn were mainly underestimated in both sites. By contrast, the summer baseflow concentrations and fluxes were overestimated by the model. The seasonal biases in the simulation of snowmelt, excess nitrogen flushing events, autumn rain related fluxes and baseflow periods partly compensate each other at the annual scale. Thus, the net result for a 5-year simulation was that simulated NO3-N loads were only −11% lower than observed. The results suggest that processes influencing autumnal and snowmelt-initiated NO3-N flushing as well as the summertime in-stream mineral nitrogen uptake are potential key issues to be developed in the future. In addition, we highlight temporal similarities and differences in the observed NO3-N losses from the agricultural and mixed land-use catchments.
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•Overall the N load simulation was better in the larger than the smaller catchment.•Snowmelt flow-weighted mean NO3-N was overall underestimated by the model.•NO3-N fertiliser loads during short spring and summer discharge events were not reproduce by a catchment model.•Autumn N losses from an agricultural site were source-limited during an extremely wet year.•Better simulation of soil hydrology and N process in frozen and unfrozen soil is needed.
VEMALA is an operational, national-scale nutrient loading model for Finnish watersheds. It simulates hydrology; nutrient processes; leaching; and transport on land, rivers, and lakes. The model ...simulates nutrient gross load, retention, and net load from Finnish watersheds to the Baltic Sea. It was developed over a period of many years and three versions are currently operational, simulating different nutrients and processes. The first version of VEMALA (vs. 1.1) is based on a regression model between nutrient concentration and runoff. Since the first version, the model has been developed towards a more process-based nutrient loading model, by developing a catchment scale, semi-process-based model of total nitrogen loading, VEMALA-N, and by incorporating and developing a field-scale process-based model, ICECREAM, for total phosphorus loading simulations (VEMALA-ICECREAM). The model performance was tested in two ways: (1) by comparison of simulated net nitrogen and phosphorus loads with loads calculated from monitoring data for all major watersheds in Finland and (2) by comparing simulated and observed daily nutrient concentrations for the river Aurajoki by both old and new, process-based model approaches. Comparison of the results shows that the model is suitable for nutrient load simulation at a watershed scale and at a national scale; the new versions of the model are also suitable for applications at a smaller scale.
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