Enhanced GIS Procedure as a Screening Tool for Watershed-Scale Assessments of On-Site System Nutrient Loading
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 13, Issue 8
Abstract
Watershed assessment of nutrient loading from on-site systems is an important issue for a state such as North Carolina, where approximately 50% of the total housing units rely on these systems for household wastewater treatment. Integration of spatially incongruent data sets has always been a major obstacle for environmental studies dealing with interdisciplinary data sets. A geographical information system (GIS)-based area normalization procedure was developed to transfer demographic information from census blocks to watersheds. The GIS-based area normalization procedure improved statewide estimates by 5 and 12%, respectively, for housing units using on-site systems and resulting nitrogen loadings compared to a visualization procedure. A parametric test conducted using a univariate procedure indicated that there were significant differences between the number of housing units using on-site systems , nitrogen loadings , and total population estimated by the visualization procedure and the normalization procedure at level.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 13 • Issue 8 • August 2008
Pages: 744 - 751
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 25, 2006
Accepted: May 21, 2007
Published online: Aug 1, 2008
Published in print: Aug 2008
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