Identification and Scaling Behavior Assessment of the Dominant Hydrological Factors of Nitrate Concentrations in Streamflow
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 25, Issue 6
Abstract
Nitrate-nitrogen (nitrate) pollution remains one of the most common causes of surface water quality degradation. Previous studies explored the fractal scaling behavior of controlling factors, but few studies investigated the change of scaling characteristics with time and the influence of a combination of factors on streamflow nitrate concentration (SFC). This study showed that a suite of hydrological factors impacting the SFC variations at multiple temporal scales can be determined using wavelet coherence analysis. The scaling behavior for controlling factors was evaluated using multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis. Results showed that streamflow and base flow exhibited persistent behavior, whereas the precipitation exhibited variable scaling behaviors that contributed to significant SFC fluctuations at multiple scales. Streamflow had substantial control on the SFC fluctuations when the time scale was shorter than 90 days. The combination of precipitation and streamflow formed the dominant processes impacting SFC at larger temporal scales (). These results provide an effective way to identify the factors influencing SFC variations across scales and predict the temporal evolution of SFC.
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Data Availability Statement
The water quality data collection was supported by Iowa State University, and daily precipitation data were downloaded from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet server. Daily streamflow records can be downloaded from the US Geological Survey website. Data requests can be addressed to the corresponding author or directly from Youkuan Zhang ([email protected]).
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, PR China (Grant No. BK20190024) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41931292).
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 25 • Issue 6 • June 2020
Copyright
©2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 31, 2019
Accepted: Jan 17, 2020
Published online: Mar 28, 2020
Published in print: Jun 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Aug 28, 2020
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