Nutrient Delivery from the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico And
the entire landscape must be considered if hydrologic and water quality models are doi:10.2489/jswc.69.1.26 used to predict the delivery of sediment and nutrients. Similarly, the contribution of other sources (including noncultivated lands, urban areas, forests, and the direct discharge Nutrient delivery from the Mississippi of waste water to streams and rivers) should be accounted for. In addition, processes River to the Gulf of Mexico and effects of occurring in streams, lakes, and reservoirs affect the fate of pollutants as they are trans- cropland conservation ported through the system and should also be included. M.J. White, C. Santhi, N. Kannan, J.G. Arnold, D. Harmel, L. Norfleet, P. Allen, M. DiLuzio, X. Comprehensive water quality simulation Wang, J. Atwood, E. Haney, and M. Vaughn Johnson at the scale of the Mississippi River Basin (MRB, 3,220,000 km2 [1,240,000 mi2]) is Abstract: Excessive nutrients transported from the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) have cre- a difficult task; thus, only a few modeling ated a hypoxic zone within the Gulf of Mexico, with numerous negative ecological effects. efforts at that scale have been conducted Copyright © 2014 Soil and Water Conservation Society. All rights reserved. Furthermore, federal expenditures on agricultural conservation practices have received to date. The contiguous United States was Journal of Soil and Water Conservation intense scrutiny in recent years. Partly driven by these factors, the USDA Conservation simulated by Srinivasan et al. (1998) in the Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) recently completed a comprehensive evaluation of nutri- Hydrologic Unit Model for the United ent sources and delivery to the Gulf.
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