Identification of critical areas of non-point source pollution from flat agricultural watersheds

The research was undertaken to simulate the surface transport of water and chemicals from a flat agricultural watershed at the Green Belt farm in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The GIS database created for the Black Rapid Creek watershed focused on attributes and data necessary to run a non-point source model for surface transport of water and chemicals called AGNPS. The GIS used in the current study was SPANS for the OS/2 warp (version 3) environment. The years of simulation for the study area were 1992 and 1993. The study was carried out on a watershed scale and flow routing from different cells to the outlet of the watershed was simulated with AGNPS under different management practices. The results of the study indicate that input variables of AGNPS model for a flat agricultural watershed, flow direction, precipitation event and topography of the land, affect the surface runoff volume at the outlet considerably. (Abstract shortened by UMI.