Land use changes affect water quality

Watershed impacts of agricultural and urban development can be modeled through detailed knowledge of runoff and the sediment and nutrient loading from stormwater runoff. Evaluation of stormwater runoff quantity and quality is performed by combining empirical relationships with accurate rainfall-runoff distributions through event or continuous simulations.

Continuous simulation, using the physics-based distributed hydrologic model Vflo™, is used to identify runoff and loading rates for development scenarios. Within the model, distributed maps of topography, soils, and land use/cover are used to represent the watershed surface characteristics and future development scenarios. Runoff rates from future development can be modeled to provide estimates of stormwater impacts resulting from changes made to the natural environment.

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