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Maria Mimikou - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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decision support for diffuse Pollution management
Environmental Modelling and Software, 2012Co-Authors: Yiannis Panagopoulos, Christos Makropoulos, Maria MimikouAbstract:The effort to manage diffuse Pollution at the catchment scale is an ongoing challenge that needs to take into account trade-offs between environmental and economic objectives. Best Management Practices (BMPs) are gaining ground as a means to address the problem, but their application (and impact) is highly dependant on the characteristics of the crops and of the land in which they are to be applied. In this paper, we demonstrate a new methodology and associated decision support tool that suggests the optimal location for placing BMPs to minimise diffuse Surface Water Pollution at the catchment scale, by determining the trade-off among economic and multiple environmental objectives. The decision support tool consists of a non-point source (NPS) Pollution estimator, the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model, a genetic algorithm (GA), which serves as the optimisation engine for the selection and placement of BMPs across the agricultural land of the catchment, and of an empirical economic function for the estimation of the mean annual cost of BMP implementation. In the proposed decision support tool, SWAT was run a number of times equal to the number of tested BMPs, to predict nitrates nitrogen (N-NO3) and total phosphorus (TP) losses from all the agricultural Hydrologic Response Units (HRUs) and possible BMPs implemented on them. The results were then saved in a database which was subsequently used for the optimisation process. Fifty different BMPs, including sole or combined changes in livestock, crop, soil and nutrient application management in alfalfa, corn and pastureland fields, were evaluated in the reported application of the tool in a catchment in Greece, by solving a three-objective optimisation process (cost, TP and N-NO3). The relevant two-dimensional trade-off curves of cost-TP, cost-N-NO3 and N-NO3-TP are presented and discussed. The strictest environmental target, expressed as a 45% reduction of TP at the catchment outlet, which also resulted in a 25% reduction of the annual N-NO3 yield was met at an affordable annual cost of 25 @?/person by establishing an optimal combination of BMPs. The methodology could be used to assist in a more cost-effective implementation of environmental legislation.
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reducing Surface Water Pollution through the assessment of the cost effectiveness of bmps at different spatial scales
Journal of Environmental Management, 2011Co-Authors: Yiannis Panagopoulos, Christos Makropoulos, Maria MimikouAbstract:Abstract Two kinds of agricultural Best Management Practices (BMPs) were examined with respect to cost-effectiveness (CE) in reducing sediment, nitrates-nitrogen (NO3–N) and total phosphorus (TP) losses to Surface Waters of the Arachtos catchment in Western Greece. The establishment of filter strips at the edge of fields and a non-structural measure, namely fertilization reduction in alfalfa, combined with contour farming and zero-tillage in corn and reduction of animal numbers in pastureland, were evaluated. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used as the non-point-source (NPS) estimator, while a simple economic component was developed estimating BMP implementation cost as the mean annual expenses needed to undertake and operate the practice for a 5-year period. After each BMP implementation, the ratio of their CE in reducing Pollution was calculated for each Hydrologic Response Unit (HRU) separately, for each agricultural land use type entirely and for the whole catchment. The results at the HRU scale are presented comprehensively on a map, demonstrating the spatial differentiation of CE ratios across the catchment that enhances the identification of locations where each BMP is most advisable for implementation. Based on the analysis, a catchment management solution of affordable total cost would include the expensive measure of filter strips in corn and only in a small number of pastureland fields, in combination with the profitable measure of reducing fertilization to alfalfa fields. When examined for its impact on river loads at the outlet, the latter measure led to a 20 tn or 8% annual decrease of TP from the baseline with savings of 15€/kg of pollutant reduction. Filter strips in corn fields reduced annual sediments by 66 Ktn or 5%, NO3–N by 71 tn or 9.5% and TP by 27 tn or 10%, with an additional cost of 3.1 €/tn, 3.3 €/kg and 8.1 €/kg of each pollutant respectively. The study concludes that considerable reductions of several pollutant types at the same time can be achieved, even at low total cost, by combining targeted BMP implementation strategies only in small parts of the catchment, also enabling policy makers to take local socio-economic constraints into consideration. The methodology and the results presented aim to facilitate decision making for a cost-effective management of diffuse Pollution by enabling modelers and researchers to make rapid and reliable BMP cost estimations and thus being able to calculate their CE at the local level in order to identify the most suitable areas for their implementation.
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diffuse Surface Water Pollution driving factors for different geoclimatic regions
Water Resources Management, 2011Co-Authors: Yiannis Panagopoulos, Christos Makropoulos, Maria MimikouAbstract:The quantification of point and non-point losses of Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P) to Surface Waters is currently a major issue for the implementation of Environmental Directives, such as the Water Framework Directive in Europe. However, the drivers behind nutrient Pollution are location specific and are affected by regional hydroclimatic and geomorphological characteristics. In this study the river basin model SWAT was used in order to improve the process-based understanding of mechanisms behind nutrient transport from land to Water recipients in two European catchments with significantly different meteorological conditions: the Greek catchment of Ali Efenti, representative of the Mediterranean climate, and the Norwegian catchment of Vansjo-Hobolv, representative of the cold climate typical in Scandinavia. The models were firstly calibrated according to measured river flows and nutrient loads, and then four Best Management Practices (BMPs), related to nutrient application and soil management were applied in order to examine their effectiveness under the different geoclimatic conditions of the two catchments. The results of the baseline indicated that diffuse agricultural sources were the largest contributor of N losses in both catchments and of P losses in the Greek catchment, while point sources were significant contributors to P levels in Norwegian rivers. Nutrient losses to Surface Waters in Ali Efenti exhibited high seasonal variation, attributed to the extremeness of precipitation events that is typical in the Mediterranean, as well as to the temporal distribution of sediment losses to Waters. On the other hand, in Scandinavia, the losses of N and P occurred with less deviation throughout the year and independently of the freezing of soils. The values of the calibrated parameters that mainly governed the hydrological and erosion processes in the catchments demonstrated the natural driving forces of nutrient losses to Waters and their temporal distribution indicating that these forces are also crucial in determining the appropriate implementation of agricultural management practices in various geoclimatic regions.
Shurong Fang - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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analysis of Surface Water Pollution accidents in china characteristics and lessons for risk management
Environmental Management, 2016Co-Authors: Tongzhu Zhang, Feng Lu, Shurong FangAbstract:Understanding historical accidents is important for accident prevention and risk mitigation; however, there are no public databases of Pollution accidents in China, and no detailed information regarding such incidents is readily available. Thus, 653 representative cases of Surface Water Pollution accidents in China were identified and described as a function of time, location, materials involved, origin, and causes. The severity and other features of the accidents, frequency and quantities of chemicals involved, frequency and number of people poisoned, frequency and number of people affected, frequency and time for which Pollution lasted, and frequency and length of Pollution zone were effectively used to value and estimate the accumulated probabilities. The probabilities of occurrences of various types based on origin and causes were also summarized based on these observations. The following conclusions can be drawn from these analyses: (1) There was a high proportion of accidents involving multi-district boundary regions and drinking Water crises, indicating that more attention should be paid to environmental risk prevention and the mitigation of such incidents. (2) A high proportion of accidents originated from small-sized chemical plants, indicating that these types of enterprises should be considered during policy making. (3) The most common cause (49.8 % of the total) was intentional acts (illegal discharge); accordingly, efforts to increase environmental consciousness in China should be enhanced.
Lu Han - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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an novel identification method of the environmental risk sources for Surface Water Pollution accidents in chemical industrial parks
Journal of Environmental Sciences-china, 2013Co-Authors: Jianfeng Peng, Yonghui Song, Peng Yuan, Shuhu Xiao, Lu HanAbstract:The chemical industry is a major source of various Pollution accidents. Improving the management level of risk sources for Pollution accidents has become an urgent demand for most industrialized countries. In Pollution accidents, the released chemicals harm the receptors to some extent depending on their sensitivity or susceptibility. Therefore, identifying the potential risk sources from such a large number of chemical enterprises has become pressingly urgent. Based on the simulation of the whole accident process, a novel and expandable identification method for risk sources causing Water Pollution accidents is presented. The newly developed approach, by analyzing and stimulating the whole process of a Pollution accident between sources and receptors, can be applied to identify risk sources, especially on the nationwide scale. Three major types of losses, such as social, economic and ecological losses, were normalized, analyzed and used for overall consequence modeling. A specific case study area, located in a chemical industry park (CIP) along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province, China, was selected to test the potential of the identification method. The results showed that there were four risk sources for Pollution accidents in this CIP. Aniline leakage in the HS Chemical Plant would lead to the most serious impact on the surrounding Water environment. This potential accident would severely damage the ecosystem up to 3.8 km downstream of Yangtze River, and lead to Pollution over a distance stretching to 73.7 km downstream. The proposed method is easily extended to the nationwide identification of potential risk sources.
Marco Vighi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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gis based system for Surface Water risk assessment of agricultural chemicals 1 methodological approach
Environmental Science & Technology, 2002Co-Authors: Roberto Verro, Maura Calliera, Guido Maffioli, And Antonio Finizio, Serenella Sala, Domenica Auteri, Marco VighiAbstract:A methodology to develop a GIS-based system for the Surface Water risk assessment of agricultural chemicals is described. It is based on the integration of relational and spatial databases, GIS incorporating raster and vector, mass balance models, and pesticide risks indicators. Surface Water Pollution was modeled by taking into account two main processes: the load due to drift and the load due to a rainfall−runoff event. The former is immediately consequent to pesticide application; the second occurs a short period afterward. Thus two distinct PEC (predicted environmental concentration) values were estimated, differing in time. A pilot approach was applied to the herbicide alachlor on corn in Lombardia region (northern Italy) and represents the first stage of a wider project. Although the resultant alachlor PEC and risk maps represent a static image of a worst-case simulation, the main objective was to provide information for the territory with respect to relative risks at the Watershed level, which is ...
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gis based system for Surface Water risk assessment of agricultural chemicals 1 methodological approach
Environmental Science & Technology, 2002Co-Authors: Roberto Verro, Maura Calliera, Guido Maffioli, And Antonio Finizio, Serenella Sala, Domenica Auteri, Marco VighiAbstract:A methodology to develop a GIS-based system for the Surface Water risk assessment of agricultural chemicals is described. It is based on the integration of relational and spatial databases, GIS incorporating raster and vector, mass balance models, and pesticide risks indicators. Surface Water Pollution was modeled by taking into account two main processes: the load due to drift and the load due to a rainfall-runoff event. The former is immediately consequent to pesticide application; the second occurs a short period afterward. Thus two distinct PEC (predicted environmental concentration) values were estimated, differing in time. A pilot approach was applied to the herbicide alachlor on corn in Lombardia region (northern Italy) and represents the first stage of a wider project. Although the resultant alachlor PEC and risk maps represent a static image of a worst-case simulation, the main objective was to provide information for the territory with respect to relative risks at the Watershed level, which is important in managing risks to the aquatic environment. The driving forces and spatial variability of the above-mentioned processes were investigated to improve knowledge about the territory and to indicate the need for more detailed site-specific studies.
Yiannis Panagopoulos - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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decision support for diffuse Pollution management
Environmental Modelling and Software, 2012Co-Authors: Yiannis Panagopoulos, Christos Makropoulos, Maria MimikouAbstract:The effort to manage diffuse Pollution at the catchment scale is an ongoing challenge that needs to take into account trade-offs between environmental and economic objectives. Best Management Practices (BMPs) are gaining ground as a means to address the problem, but their application (and impact) is highly dependant on the characteristics of the crops and of the land in which they are to be applied. In this paper, we demonstrate a new methodology and associated decision support tool that suggests the optimal location for placing BMPs to minimise diffuse Surface Water Pollution at the catchment scale, by determining the trade-off among economic and multiple environmental objectives. The decision support tool consists of a non-point source (NPS) Pollution estimator, the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model, a genetic algorithm (GA), which serves as the optimisation engine for the selection and placement of BMPs across the agricultural land of the catchment, and of an empirical economic function for the estimation of the mean annual cost of BMP implementation. In the proposed decision support tool, SWAT was run a number of times equal to the number of tested BMPs, to predict nitrates nitrogen (N-NO3) and total phosphorus (TP) losses from all the agricultural Hydrologic Response Units (HRUs) and possible BMPs implemented on them. The results were then saved in a database which was subsequently used for the optimisation process. Fifty different BMPs, including sole or combined changes in livestock, crop, soil and nutrient application management in alfalfa, corn and pastureland fields, were evaluated in the reported application of the tool in a catchment in Greece, by solving a three-objective optimisation process (cost, TP and N-NO3). The relevant two-dimensional trade-off curves of cost-TP, cost-N-NO3 and N-NO3-TP are presented and discussed. The strictest environmental target, expressed as a 45% reduction of TP at the catchment outlet, which also resulted in a 25% reduction of the annual N-NO3 yield was met at an affordable annual cost of 25 @?/person by establishing an optimal combination of BMPs. The methodology could be used to assist in a more cost-effective implementation of environmental legislation.
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reducing Surface Water Pollution through the assessment of the cost effectiveness of bmps at different spatial scales
Journal of Environmental Management, 2011Co-Authors: Yiannis Panagopoulos, Christos Makropoulos, Maria MimikouAbstract:Abstract Two kinds of agricultural Best Management Practices (BMPs) were examined with respect to cost-effectiveness (CE) in reducing sediment, nitrates-nitrogen (NO3–N) and total phosphorus (TP) losses to Surface Waters of the Arachtos catchment in Western Greece. The establishment of filter strips at the edge of fields and a non-structural measure, namely fertilization reduction in alfalfa, combined with contour farming and zero-tillage in corn and reduction of animal numbers in pastureland, were evaluated. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used as the non-point-source (NPS) estimator, while a simple economic component was developed estimating BMP implementation cost as the mean annual expenses needed to undertake and operate the practice for a 5-year period. After each BMP implementation, the ratio of their CE in reducing Pollution was calculated for each Hydrologic Response Unit (HRU) separately, for each agricultural land use type entirely and for the whole catchment. The results at the HRU scale are presented comprehensively on a map, demonstrating the spatial differentiation of CE ratios across the catchment that enhances the identification of locations where each BMP is most advisable for implementation. Based on the analysis, a catchment management solution of affordable total cost would include the expensive measure of filter strips in corn and only in a small number of pastureland fields, in combination with the profitable measure of reducing fertilization to alfalfa fields. When examined for its impact on river loads at the outlet, the latter measure led to a 20 tn or 8% annual decrease of TP from the baseline with savings of 15€/kg of pollutant reduction. Filter strips in corn fields reduced annual sediments by 66 Ktn or 5%, NO3–N by 71 tn or 9.5% and TP by 27 tn or 10%, with an additional cost of 3.1 €/tn, 3.3 €/kg and 8.1 €/kg of each pollutant respectively. The study concludes that considerable reductions of several pollutant types at the same time can be achieved, even at low total cost, by combining targeted BMP implementation strategies only in small parts of the catchment, also enabling policy makers to take local socio-economic constraints into consideration. The methodology and the results presented aim to facilitate decision making for a cost-effective management of diffuse Pollution by enabling modelers and researchers to make rapid and reliable BMP cost estimations and thus being able to calculate their CE at the local level in order to identify the most suitable areas for their implementation.
-
diffuse Surface Water Pollution driving factors for different geoclimatic regions
Water Resources Management, 2011Co-Authors: Yiannis Panagopoulos, Christos Makropoulos, Maria MimikouAbstract:The quantification of point and non-point losses of Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P) to Surface Waters is currently a major issue for the implementation of Environmental Directives, such as the Water Framework Directive in Europe. However, the drivers behind nutrient Pollution are location specific and are affected by regional hydroclimatic and geomorphological characteristics. In this study the river basin model SWAT was used in order to improve the process-based understanding of mechanisms behind nutrient transport from land to Water recipients in two European catchments with significantly different meteorological conditions: the Greek catchment of Ali Efenti, representative of the Mediterranean climate, and the Norwegian catchment of Vansjo-Hobolv, representative of the cold climate typical in Scandinavia. The models were firstly calibrated according to measured river flows and nutrient loads, and then four Best Management Practices (BMPs), related to nutrient application and soil management were applied in order to examine their effectiveness under the different geoclimatic conditions of the two catchments. The results of the baseline indicated that diffuse agricultural sources were the largest contributor of N losses in both catchments and of P losses in the Greek catchment, while point sources were significant contributors to P levels in Norwegian rivers. Nutrient losses to Surface Waters in Ali Efenti exhibited high seasonal variation, attributed to the extremeness of precipitation events that is typical in the Mediterranean, as well as to the temporal distribution of sediment losses to Waters. On the other hand, in Scandinavia, the losses of N and P occurred with less deviation throughout the year and independently of the freezing of soils. The values of the calibrated parameters that mainly governed the hydrological and erosion processes in the catchments demonstrated the natural driving forces of nutrient losses to Waters and their temporal distribution indicating that these forces are also crucial in determining the appropriate implementation of agricultural management practices in various geoclimatic regions.