Simulation of Non-point Source Pollution in the Songhua River Basin Using GBNP Model

Abstract:

China is facing increasingly severe water pollution issue with rapid socio-economic development. Non-point source pollution, which is rarely monitored, has become the main forms of water pollution in China. In this study, the Geomorphology-Based Non-point source Pollution (GBNP) model was used to simulate the processes of rain-runoff, soil erosion, sediment routing and pollutant transport in the Songhua River basin from 2001 to 2010. The spatio-temporal variation of non-point source pollution and river water quality were analyzed based on the simulation outputs. In the entire basin, the annual mean loading of TN, TP and soil erosion are 270,000 ton/a, 42,200 ton/a and 55,900,000 ton/a, respectively. The point and non-point source pollution respectively account for 44.9% and 55.1% in TN loading. For TP loading, the proportions of point and non-point source pollution are 14.4% and 85.6%, respectively. It suggests that the non-point source pollution control and treatments should be paid more attention in the Songhua River basin. The inter-annual and intra-annual variations of non-point source pollution components and potential driving mechanisms are further examined. The annual loading of soil erosion, TN and TP are highly correlated with annual runoff, with the correlation coefficients of 0.75, 0.91 and 0.92, respectively, which implies that rain-runoff could be the main driving force of non-point pollution. The monthly sediment concentration in the watercourse is high in flood season and low in non-flood season, which agrees well with the seasonality of monthly runoff. By contrast, the concentrations of TN and TP in watercourse show the opposite features.