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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Oxford, Mississippi » National Sedimentation Laboratory » Water Quality and Ecology Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #264941
Title: AnnAGNPS model application for nitrogen loading assessment for the future midwest landscape study

Author
item YUAN, YONGPING - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
item MEHAFFEY, MEGAN - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
item LOPEZ, RICARDO - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
item Bingner, Ronald - Ron
item BRUINS, RANDY - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
item ERICKSON, CAROLINE - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
item JACKSON, MICHAEL - Us Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Submitted to: Water
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/1/2011
Publication Date: 2/17/2011
Citation: Yuan, Y., Mehaffey, M.H., Lopez, R., Bingner, R.L., Bruins, R., Erickson, C., Jackson, M.A. 2011. AnnAGNPS model application for nitrogen loading assessment for the future midwest landscape study. Water. 3:196-216.

Interpretive Summary: The Future Midwest Landscape (FML) project is part of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s new Ecosystem Services Research Program, undertaken to examine the variety of ways that landscapes affect human well-being, particularly from crop lands, conservation areas, wetlands, lakes, and streams. The goal of the FML project is to quantify current and future ecosystem services across the region and to examine environmental changes expected to occur as a result of the growing demand for biofuels. In this study, one of several pilot studies taking place under the umbrella of the FML research project, the USDA Annualized Agricultural Non-Point Source Pollution (AnnAGNPS) model was applied to the East Fork Kaskaskia River watershed located in the Kaskaskia River Basin within the Upper Mississippi River Basin in Illinois. Simulations of the study area produced satisfactory results in simulating monthly and annual runoff. Delineations with smaller areas were shown to better represent the actual landscape by capturing small critical areas that would be homogenized in coarser delineation. Simulations of alternative future scenarios demonstrated that as corn production increases to meet future biofuel needs, total nitrogen losses increase 200 percent if all corn/soybean rotations were converted to continuous corn. This study provides an important foundation for the larger FML regional modeling effort by addressing challenging FML landscape modeling issues such as evaluating various watershed models, including the need for further model development, and the impact of spatial resolution on simulation results.

Technical Abstract: The Future Midwest Landscape (FML) project is part of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s new Ecosystem Services Research Program, undertaken to examine the variety of ways in which landscapes that include crop lands, conservation areas, wetlands, lakes, and streams affect human well-being. The goal of the FML project is to quantify current and future ecosystem services across the region and to examine changes expected to occur as a result of the growing demand for biofuels. This study is one of several pilots taking place under the umbrella of the FML research project. In this study, the USDA Annualized Agricultural Non-Point Source Pollution (AnnAGNPS) model was applied to the East Fork Kaskaskia River watershed (289.3 km2) located in the Kaskaskia River Basin within the Upper Mississippi River Basin in Illinois. The effect of different spatial resolutions on model performance was investigated by comparing the observed runoff with the AnnAGNPS simulated results. Alternative future scenarios such as meeting future biofuel target were also simulated and analyzed. All delineations of the study area (coarser to finer) produced satisfactory results in simulating monthly and annual runoff. However, the size of the delineation does impact the simulation results. Finer delineations better represented the actual landscape and captured small critical areas that would be homogenized in coarser delineation. Those small critical areas are important to target to achieve maximum environment benefit. Simulations of alternative future scenarios showed that as corn production increases to meet future biofuel needs, total nitrogen loss increases. For this watershed, total N loss would be more than doubled if converting all corn/soybean rotation (15871.2 ha) to continuous corn comparing with the base year total N loss which is 11.2 kg/ha. Conservation practices are needed to reduce total nitrogen loss from the watershed. This study provides an important foundation for the larger FML region modeling effort by addressing challenging FML landscape modeling issues such as model selection, need for further model development, and spatial resolution.