Inicio  /  Geosciences  /  Vol: 9 Núm: 1 Par: January (2019)  /  Artículo
ARTÍCULO
TITULO

Modeling the Natural Drainage Network of the Grand River in Southern Ontario: Agriculture May Increase Total Channel Length of Low-Order Streams

Aslam Hanief and Andrew E. Laursen    

Resumen

The Grand River watershed is an important agricultural area in southern Ontario, with several large and growing municipalities. Based on digital elevation models (DEMs), the natural drainage network was modelled to predict flow paths. Channel lengths and locations of the predicted network were compared with a ground-truthed channel network to determine efficacy of the models. Approximately 5% of predicted channels lay >40 m from actual channel locations. This amounted to 388 km of channel that had no corresponding channels in reality. The model was unable to predict, based on topography, 2535 km of actual channel present in the watershed. Channels not anticipated by topography were mostly first-order, with low sinuosity, were most common in areas with high agricultural land use, and are likely excavated extensions to headwater streams to facilitate drainage. In addition, this study showed that Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) models produced using different DEM resolutions did not predict significantly different stream flows, even when resolution was as low as 200 m. However, these low resolution DEMs did result in under-prediction of sediment export entering Lake Erie, most likely because the low resolution maps failed to account for small localized areas of high slope that would have relatively higher rates of erosion.

 Artículos similares

       
 
George Kargas, Paraskevi A. Londra and Kyriaki Sotirakoglou    
Saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) of soil, especially of the upper soil layer, is a basic parameter for modeling water infiltration and solute transport in the soil. In the present study, spatial and temporal variability of Ks in the upper soil layer... ver más
Revista: Geosciences

 
Aurélie Martin, Thomas Lecocq, Klaus-G. Hinzen, Thierry Camelbeeck, Yves Quinif and Nathalie Fagel    
Broken or deformed speleothems have been used as indicators of paleo-earthquakes since the 1990s; however, a causal link is difficult to prove except for some thin speleothems. In contrast, the presence of intact speleothems permits estimating an upper l... ver más
Revista: Geosciences

 
Emna Mejri, Rainer Helmig and Rachida Bouhlila    
Soil and groundwater salinization are very important environmental issues of global concern. They threaten mainly the arid and semiarid regions characterized by dry climate conditions and an increase of irrigation practices. Among these regions, the sout... ver más
Revista: Geosciences

 
Aslam Hanief and Andrew E. Laursen    
The Grand River watershed is an important agricultural area in southern Ontario, with several large and growing municipalities. Based on digital elevation models (DEMs), the natural drainage network was modelled to predict flow paths. Channel lengths and... ver más
Revista: Geosciences

 
Ali Nadir Arslan and Zuhal Akyürek    
Snow cover is an essential climate variable directly affecting the Earth?s energy balance. Snow cover has a number of important physical properties that exert an influence on global and regional energy, water, and carbon cycles. Remote sensing provides a... ver más
Revista: Geosciences