Effect of Soil Data Resolution on Identification of Critical Source Areas of Sediment
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 16, Issue 3
Abstract
Identification of critical source areas (CSAs) of pollution in a watershed is important for effective implementation of best management practices (BMPs). Process-based watershed models are often used for this purpose. One of the main inputs to these models is the spatially explicit soils data. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the use of two commonly used soil data sets, the State Soil Geographic (STATSGO) and the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) data, can lead to differences in location of CSAs of sediment. A watershed model, Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), in combination with the Tukey-Kramer test was used for locating CSAs in the Fish River watershed located in coastal Alabama. The model was calibrated and validated using flow data from a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) gauging station located within the watershed. The locations of the CSAs of sediment were analyzed at subwatershed and hydrologic response unit (HRU) levels. Results show that the locations of the CSAs were different for the two soil data sets. The locations of the CSAs varied at both subwatershed and HRU levels. The use of STATSGO soil data resulted in higher soil erodibility factor and surface runoff. As a result, higher sediment yield was obtained from the use of the STATSGO data as compared with the sediment yield obtained from the use of the SSURGO data. Therefore, for accurate identification of CSAs of sediment (and potentially other pollutants) and for effective implementation of economically feasible BMPs, it is important to use the most detailed spatial data set available.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writers wish to acknowledge the funding provided by the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium (MASGC) and the Center for Forest Sustainability through the Peaks of Excellence Program at Auburn University.
References
Allen, R. G., Jensen, M. E., Wright, J. L., and Burman, R. D. (1989). “Operational estimates of reference evapotranspiration.” Agronomy J., 81(4), 650–662.
Di Luzio, M., Srinivasan, R., Arnold, J. G., and Neitsch, S. (2002). “Arcview interface for SWAT 2000 User’s guide.” TWRI Rep. TR-193, Water Resources Institute, College Station, TX.
Gburek, W. J., and Sharpley, A. N. (1998). “Hydrologic controls on phosphorus loss from upland agricultural watersheds.” J. Environ. Qual., 27, 267–277.
Geza, M., and McCary, J. E. (2008). “Effects of soil data resolution on SWAT model stream flow and water quality predictions.” J. Environ. Manage., 88, 393–406.
Gitau, M. W., Veith, T. L., and Gubrek, W. J. (2004). “Farm-level optimization of BMP placement for cost-effective pollution reduction.” Trans. ASAE, 47(6), 1923–1931.
Green, W. H., and Ampt, G. A. (1911). “Studies on soil physics, Part I, The flow of air and water through soils.” J. Agric. Sci., 4(1), 1–24.
Hargreaves, G. H., and Samani, Z. A. (1985). “Reference crop evapotranspiration from temperature.” Appl. Eng. Agric., 1(2), 96–99.
Kalin, L., Govindraju, R. S., and Hantush, M. M. (2004). “Development and application of a methodology for sediment source identification. l: Modified unit sediment approach.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 9, 184–193.
Kalin, L., and Hantush, M. M. (2006). “Hydrologic modeling of an eastern Pennsylvania watershed with NEXRAD and rain gauge data.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 555–569.
Kramer, C. Y. (1956). “Extension of multiple range tests to group means with unequal number of replications.” Biometrics, 12(3), 307–310.
Kramer, C. Y. (1957). “Extension of multiple range tests to group correlated adjusted means.” Biometrics, 13(1), 13–18.
Lim, K., Engel, B. A., Tang, Z., Choi, J., Kim, K., and Muthukrishnan, S. (2005). “Automated Web GIS based hydrograph analysis tool, WHAT.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 41(6), 1407–1416.
Loveland, T. R., and Shaw, D. M. (1996). “Multi-resolution land characterization: Building collaborative partnerships.” Gap analysis: A landscape approach to biodiversity planning, J. M. Scott, T. H. Tear, and F. W. Davis, eds., American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Bethesda, MD, 79–85.
Mukundan, R., Radcliffe, D. E., and Risse, L. M. (2010). “Spatial resolution of soil data and and channel erosion effects on SWAT model predictions of flow and sediment.” J. Soil Water Conserv., 65(2), 92–104.
Neitsch, S., Arnold, J. G., Kiniry, J. S., and Williams, J. (2005). Soil and water assessment tool user’s manual version 2005, Water Resources Institute, College Station, TX.
Pandey, A. M., Chowdary, V. M., Mal, B. C., and Billib, M. (2009). “Application of the WEPP model for prioritization and evaluation of best management practices in an Indian watershed.” Hydrol. Processes, 23, 2997–3005.
Peschel, J. M., Hann, P. K., and Lacey, R. E. (2003). “A SSURGO pre-processing extension 798 for the arc view soil and water assessment tool.” Transaction of ASAE (Paper no. 032123).
Peschel, J. M., Haan, P. K., and Lacey, R. E. (2006). “Influences of soil dataset resolution on hydrologic modeling.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 42(5), 1371–1389.
Priestley, C. H. B., and Taylor, R. J. (1972). “On the assessment of surface heat flux and evaporation using large-scale parameters.” Mon. Weather Rev., 100(2), 81–-92.
Santhi, C., Arnold, J. G., Williams, J. R., Dugas, W. A., Srinivasan, R., and Hauck, M. (2001). “Validation of the SWAT model on a large river basin with point and nonpoint sources.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 37(5), 1169–1188.
Soil Conservation Service (SCS). (1972). National engineering handbook, Section 4, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, DC.
Srinivasan, M. S., Gerard-Marchant, P., Veith, T. L., Gburek, W. J., and Steenhuis, T. S. (2005). “Watershed scale modeling of critical source areas of runoff generation and phosphorus transport.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 41, 361–377.
Srinivasan, M. S., Wittman, M. A., Hamlett, J. M., and Gburek, W. J. (2000). “Surface and subsurface sensors to record variable runoff generation areas.” Trans. ASAE, 43(3), 651–660.
Srivastava, P., McNair, J. N., and Johnson, T. E. (2006). “Comparison of mechanistic and neural network approaches for stream flow modeling in an agricultural watershed.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 42(3), 545–563.
Tripathi, M. P., Panda, R. K., and Raghuwanshi, N. S. (2003). “Identification and prioritization of critical sub-watersheds for soil conservation management using the SWAT model.” Biosystems Eng., 85(3), 365–379.
Wang, X., and Melesse, A. M. (2006). “Effects of SATSGO and SSURGO as inputs on SWAT model's snowmelt simulation.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 42(5), 1217–1236.
Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. (2007). “Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve management plan.” 〈http://www.weeksbay.org/mgmt/WeeksBayNERRManagementPlan.pdf〉.
White, M. S., Storm, D. E., Busteed, P. R., Stoodley, S. H., and Phillips, S. J. (2009). “Evaluating nonpoint source critical source area contributions at the watershed scale.” J. Environ. Qual., 38, 1654–1663.
Williams, J. R. (1969). “Flood routing with variable travel time or variable storage coefficients.” Trans. ASAE. 12(1), 100–103.
Williams, J. R. (1975). “Sediment-yield prediction with universal equation using runoff energy factor.” Proc. of the Sediment-Yield Workshop, USDA Sedimentation Laboratory, Oxford, MS.
Wischmeier, W. H., and Smith, D. D. (1978). “Predicting rainfall-erosion losses: A guide to conservation planning.” Agriculture Handbook No. 537, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, DC, 58.
Zollweg, J. A., Gburek, W. J., Pionke, H. B., and Sharpley, A. N. (1995). “GIS-based delineation of source areas of phosphorus within agricultural watersheds of the northeastern USA.” Proc. of the IAHS Symposium on Modeling and Management of Sustainable Basinscale Water Resources Systems, Boulder, CO, 31–39.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 16 • Issue 3 • March 2011
Pages: 253 - 262
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 13, 2010
Accepted: Aug 21, 2010
Published online: Sep 6, 2010
Published in print: Mar 1, 2011
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.