Proposal

Investigating the Effects of Potato Field Conversion into a Permaculture Orchard on Nitrate Water Pollution in a PEI Watershed.

Keli Trumpler

ENVB530 Final Project

ENVR.530.W20.FirstName.LastName.WhichPresentation

Figure 1. Overview of proposal.

Introduction & Background

Prince Edward Island, as the majority of the other provinces in Canada, has experienced a lot of change over the past century when it comes to its agriculture sector. Unlike the other provinces, most of the small family owned farms were bought out by larger potato corporations. This intensified and undiversified agricultural model has resulted in an increase in water nitrate levels resulting in poor water quality in many of the province's estuaries. This study aims to examine how converting a field of potato production to a polyculture and perennial orchard can help reduce water nitrate pollution.

This will be done using a Soil Water Analysis Tool (SWAT+). QGIS has a compatible SWAT tool known as QSWAT+. Parameters from QSWAT+ can be added on to enhance the tool's capability of modeling water quality within a watershed. The functionality of this tool involves taking a delineated watershed and combining soil nutrient, land use, and water quality data to model.

Project Objectives and Questions

There are 3 main objectives for this project:

Objectives

- Build a SWAT+ model for a watershed in Prince Edward Island.
- Model the nitrate output in streams.
- Model the nitrate output in streams with half the potato field production changed to a permaculture orchard.

Figure 2. PEI potato farm

Figure 3. Orchard

Data

For this project, the data will be obtained from various governmental and watershed group websites as shown for each parameter below:

Water quality: gauge station run by Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Weather: Environment Canada.
Soil: Charlottetown and Alberry soil series.

Methodology

Delineate Watershed
- use DEM file of watershed
- create streams
- assign and inlet and outlet
Create Hydrological Response Units
- combine:
  - landscape DEM file
  - land use map
  - soil data
  - slope classes
Enter Climate Data
- rainfall
- temperature
- relative humidity
- solar radiation
- windspeed
Run the model
- define the warm up period
- define total modeling period

From this point, the NO3 out or nitrate out of the system can be obtained. Then, the land use can be changed and the difference in NO3 can be assessed. This transition can be animated to observe the change over time. Also, to assess the accuracy of the model, the observed simulated vs actual values can be compared.

Figure 5. Some components that SWAT+ can model.

Possible problems

Conceptual

Perhaps the data will not be as easily transferable into QGIS as I expect.

Practical

Data manipulation may be difficult. Also, there are missing data points that will likely need to be interpolated.

Conclusion

I expect for this project to allow me to further practice my skills of sorting through data that is not already in a compatible form for a GIS. It will also allow me to experiment with data manipulation since all of the regions of potato farms will need to be manually converted to a perennial orchard. Further, it will give me insight on how to use a SWAT tool and what can be examined with it.

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