Department of Water, Atmosphere and Environment, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Institute of Soil Physics and Rural Water Management, Muthgasse 18, 1190, Vienna, Austria.
Institute for Land and Water Management Research, 3252, Petzenkirchen, Austria.
Environ Monit Assess. 2023 Mar 25;195(4):512. doi: 10.1007/s10661-023-11079-y.
Managing agricultural watersheds in an environmentally friendly manner necessitate the strategic implementation of well-targeted sustainable land management (SLM) practices that limit soil and nonpoint source pollution losses and translocation. Watershed-scale SLM-scenario modeling has the potential to identify efficient and effective management strategies from the field to the integrated landscape level. In a case study targeting a 66-hectare watershed in Petzenkirchen, Lower Austria, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was utilized to evaluate a variety of locally adoptable SLM practices. SWAT was calibrated and validated (monthly) at the catchment outlet for flow, sediment, nitrate-nitrogen (NO-N), ammonium nitrogen (NH-N), and mineralized phosphorus (PO-P) using SWATplusR. Considering the locally existing agricultural practices and socioeconomic and environmental factors of the research area, four conservation practices were evaluated: baseline scenario, contour farming (CF), winter cover crops (CC), and a combination of no-till and cover crops (NT + CC). The NT + CC SLM practice was found to be the most effective soil conservation practice in reducing soil loss by around 80%, whereas CF obtained the best results for decreasing the nutrient loads of NO-N and PO-P by 11% and 35%, respectively. The findings of this study imply that the setup SWAT model can serve the context-specific performance assessment and eventual promotion of SLM interventions that mitigate on-site land degradation and the consequential off-site environmental pollution resulting from agricultural nonpoint sources.
以环保的方式管理农业流域需要有策略地实施有针对性的可持续土地管理（SLM）实践，以限制土壤和非点源污染的流失和转移。流域尺度的 SLM 情景模拟有可能从田间到综合景观层面确定高效和有效的管理策略。在针对下奥地利州 Petzenkirchen 的一个 66 公顷流域的案例研究中，使用 Soil and Water Assessment Tool（SWAT）来评估各种可在当地采用的 SLM 实践。使用 SWATplusR 对流域出口的流量、泥沙、硝酸盐氮（NO-N）、氨氮（NH-N）和矿化磷（PO-P）进行了 SWAT 的校准和验证（每月一次）。考虑到研究区域现有的农业实践以及社会经济和环境因素，评估了四种保护实践：基准情景、等高耕作（CF）、冬季覆盖作物（CC）和免耕与覆盖作物的组合（NT+CC）。结果表明，NT+CC SLM 实践在减少土壤流失方面最为有效，可减少约 80%的土壤流失，而 CF 在减少 NO-N 和 PO-P 的养分负荷方面效果最好，分别减少了 11%和 35%。本研究的结果表明，所建立的 SWAT 模型可以用于特定情境的绩效评估，并最终促进 SLM 干预措施，减轻农业非点源造成的土地退化和随之而来的场外环境污染。
