Simulating Water and Nutrient Transport in an Urbanizing Agricultural Watershed with Lake-Level Regulation Using a Coupled Modeling Approach

Abstract:

The Yahara River basin located in southern Wisconsin is a watershed with long-term eutrophication issues due largely to a thriving dairy industry upstream of the Madison chain of lakes. Steady phosphorus loading from manure production and other sources has contributed directly to blue-green algae blooms and poor water quality in the lakes and river system, and is often viewed as the most important environmental problem to solve in the region. In this study, the daily streamflow and monthly nitrogen (N), sediment and phosphorus (P) transport, as well as the lake levels in the Yahara River basin are simulated using a physically-based hydrologic routing model: the Terrestrial Hydrology Model with Biogeochemistry (THMB). The original model includes representation of water and nitrogen transport but as part of this work, P transport and lake regulation are added into the model. The modified THMB model is coupled with the AgroIBIS-VSF agroecosystem model to represent dynamic coupling between agricultural management in the watershed, and N, P, and sediment transport to lakes and streams. We will present model calibration and validation results that demonstrate the hydrologic routing capability of THMB for a spatial resolution of 220m, several orders of magnitude finer than attempted previously with THMB. The calibrated modeling system is being used to simulate the impacts of climate change and land management on biogeochemistry in the Yahara watershed under four different pathways of change to the year 2070 (Yahara 2070). These scenarios are Abandonment and Renewal, Accelerated Innovation, Connected Communities and Nested Watersheds, which are used to better understand how future decision-making influences the provisioning and trade-offs of ecosystem services.