TY - JOUR

T1 - Erosion modelling designed for water quality simulation

AU - Gassmann, Matthias

AU - Lange, Jens

AU - Schuetz, Tobias

PY - 2012/5

Y1 - 2012/5

N2 - Water quality modelling often requires the simulation of erosion and sediment transport for sorptive pollutants at high temporal resolution. This paper introduces a parsimonious erosion and sediment transport model adapted to the needs of water quality modelling called ZIN-Sed. Using a kinetic-energy-of-rainfall erosion approach and an empirical transport capacity equations of overland flow, the model can mainly be parameterized by measurements, observations and literature values and just requires little calibration. It is based on the hydrological surface flow model ZIN and was tested in the 1.8 km 2 Loechernbach catchment in south-western Germany. High resolution measurements of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) by turbidity measurements (eight events) provided an opportunity to validate the model on a short-timestep base. To broaden the validation database, a calibrated MUSLE (Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation) was used to estimate sediment totals of additional 28 events. The model realistically simulated both measured SSCs and estimated sediment totals and arrived at high Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies (up to 0.85) and low RMSEs.

AB - Water quality modelling often requires the simulation of erosion and sediment transport for sorptive pollutants at high temporal resolution. This paper introduces a parsimonious erosion and sediment transport model adapted to the needs of water quality modelling called ZIN-Sed. Using a kinetic-energy-of-rainfall erosion approach and an empirical transport capacity equations of overland flow, the model can mainly be parameterized by measurements, observations and literature values and just requires little calibration. It is based on the hydrological surface flow model ZIN and was tested in the 1.8 km 2 Loechernbach catchment in south-western Germany. High resolution measurements of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) by turbidity measurements (eight events) provided an opportunity to validate the model on a short-timestep base. To broaden the validation database, a calibrated MUSLE (Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation) was used to estimate sediment totals of additional 28 events. The model realistically simulated both measured SSCs and estimated sediment totals and arrived at high Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies (up to 0.85) and low RMSEs.

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - Chemistry

KW - Catchment scale

KW - Erosion modelling

KW - Suspendȩd sediment

KW - Water quality modelling

KW - ZIN model

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84862128698&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/eco.207

DO - 10.1002/eco.207

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 5

SP - 269

EP - 278

JO - Ecohydrology

JF - Ecohydrology

SN - 1936-0592

IS - 3

ER -