Water and nitrate fluxes through a dairying catchment inferred from stream monitoring data

Abstract

Groundwater is the main pathway for diffuse nitrate transport from agricultural land into surface waters. In many groundwater systems, denitrification attenuates the effect of root zone losses.

Process-based, spatially-explicit models often can not be used to describe catchment-scale water and nitrate fluxes, as detailed land use, hydrological and biogeochemical information is usually lacking. Therefore, we developed a spatially-lumped model (‘StreamGEM’) to facilitate flux analysis in the many catchments for which stream flow and chemistry time series data, but little other information, exist.