Intensive agricultural and industrial activities are often considered major sources of water contamina-tion.Currently,riparian vegetation(RV)is increasingly being promoted as a solution to balance the potentially adve...Intensive agricultural and industrial activities are often considered major sources of water contamina-tion.Currently,riparian vegetation(RV)is increasingly being promoted as a solution to balance the potentially adverse effects that agriculture may have on water quality.Nonetheless,existing RV is often overlook in recent modelling efforts,failing to capture the current amount of ecosystem services provide.Here,we used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool ecohydrological model to simulate the influence of ground-true RV on i)nutrient(nitrate and total phosphorus)and sediment exports from agricultural areas and ii)its effect for in-stream concentrations.These results are further compared against a set of hypothetical scenarios of different RV widths and different land-uses.Our results point to a great rele-vance of existing RV in controlling in-stream concentration of sediments and nutrients where pressure from agriculture is highest,preventing them to surpass limits set in the EU Water Framework Directive.On the other hand,in areas with industry discharges,the role of RV is limited and model results suggest that restoring RV would have limited impacts.We illustrate how existing RV may already provide strong but not acknowledged water quality regulation services,how these services can differ substantially between nearby streams,and that effective strategies to improve water quality using RV must acknowledge existing patterns of vegetation,land use and contamination sources.展开更多
基金supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology(FCT),under the project Optimal Greening of Irrigated farmland to achieve a prime environment(OPTIMUS PRIME-PTDC/ASP-AGR/29771/2017)supported through the funding of the cE3c Research Centre(Ref:UIDB/00329/2020)+2 种基金Forest Research Centre(Ref:UIDB/00239/2020)by FCTthe individual research grant attributed to JP Nunes(Ref:IF/00586/2015)to AndréFonseca(Ref:PD/BD/142884/2018).
文摘Intensive agricultural and industrial activities are often considered major sources of water contamina-tion.Currently,riparian vegetation(RV)is increasingly being promoted as a solution to balance the potentially adverse effects that agriculture may have on water quality.Nonetheless,existing RV is often overlook in recent modelling efforts,failing to capture the current amount of ecosystem services provide.Here,we used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool ecohydrological model to simulate the influence of ground-true RV on i)nutrient(nitrate and total phosphorus)and sediment exports from agricultural areas and ii)its effect for in-stream concentrations.These results are further compared against a set of hypothetical scenarios of different RV widths and different land-uses.Our results point to a great rele-vance of existing RV in controlling in-stream concentration of sediments and nutrients where pressure from agriculture is highest,preventing them to surpass limits set in the EU Water Framework Directive.On the other hand,in areas with industry discharges,the role of RV is limited and model results suggest that restoring RV would have limited impacts.We illustrate how existing RV may already provide strong but not acknowledged water quality regulation services,how these services can differ substantially between nearby streams,and that effective strategies to improve water quality using RV must acknowledge existing patterns of vegetation,land use and contamination sources.
