Modeling Salinity in a Semi-arid Agricultural Watershed Using SWAT-Salt
Abstract
Arid and semi-arid regions with irrigated agricultural activities face many water quantity and quality challenges. Increased salinity in these agricultural watersheds due to natural (e.g., geologic formations) or anthropogenic causes (e.g., agricultural water and land management practices) is one of the major problems facing irrigated agriculture around the world. Elevated salinity levels in irrigation water can result in decreased crop yield and increased water demand for leaching out salt-buildup. Saline waters may also limit the application of high-efficiency irrigation practices such as drip irrigation. Distributed hydrological models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) have proven to be useful tools to find major sources of water quality problems as well as estimating the impact of different anthropogenic activities on water quantity and quality. This study applies SWAT-Salt, a new modification of the SWAT code, to simulate fluxes of major salt ions in a water-scarce agricultural watershed, accounting for salt equilibrium chemistry reactions, including precipitation-dissolution, complexation, and cation exchange. The model will be calibrated using several observational datasets along the Rio Grande in southeastern New Mexico, U.S. Results inform agricultural water management and watershed management practices to mitigate salinity.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H11I1603S
- Keywords:
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- 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1834 Human impacts;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1879 Watershed;
- HYDROLOGY