Assessing the effectiveness of Beneficial Management Practices in improving water quality under changing climate conditions
Abstract
Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs) are often proposed to improve water quality in agricultural areas. The performance of these practices is commonly assessed under the historical climate. However, changes in climate can affect water quality conditions and effectiveness of BMPs in the future. This study proposes a set of analyses to assess the performance of BMPs and propose new adaption practices under changing climate for the Qu'Appelle River Basin (QARB) in Canada. For this purpose, using a bottom-up approach, first the performance of a series of BMPs is evaluated under a wide range of possible changes in temperature and precipitation. Afterwards, outputs of an ensemble of climate models are used to identify optimal combinations of BMPs that can reduce nutrient deliveries effectively in the QARB with low costs of implementation in the future time episodes. Finally, the performance of the newly identified optimal combinations of BMPs is assessed under individual projections of climate models. Our results the effectiveness of BMPs considerably reduces under changing climate and the previously found combination of practices under the historical climate may no longer reduce nutrients under heightened temperature values. Accordingly, new combinations of optimal BMPs and temporal paths to adopt them are proposed. This type of analyses can help decision makers choose effective water management plan under changing climate in the future.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFM.H15I1140H