Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

The long-term research goals have been to develop practical approaches for environmentally sustainable nonpoint source pollution control, including watershed based source water protection and nutrient management. Development of such approach; needed for food security, environmental sustainability, soil resilience for sustainable food production and for future capacity building; will provide means to assess the effect of water management practices on the health of the water bodies in a watershed. Development of such approach also requires better understanding and description of seasonal hydrology, its impact on stream flow pattern and the impact of adopted best management practice on nutrients loads. This research focuses on the quantification of the changes in the stream flow regimes due to climate change, development of a simple and easily useable approach for the application of best management practices, and the development of an innovative approach to evaluate the performance of structural and non-structural best management practices to control and improve stream water quality in unique Ontario seasonal climatic conditions,. This approach will lead to the development of tools for effective management of sediment and nutrient nonpoint source pollution due to agricultural land use activities.

The proposed goals will be achieved by (i) quantification of the effect of climate change on seasonal stream flow pattern, (ii) by development of an easily usable screening approach to identify the location of sediment and phosphorus sources for application of best management practices in a watershed, (iii) by development of working relationships to quantify the effects of seasonal hydrology, surface inlets, blind inlets, within watershed filter strips, road side ditches and variable field boundaries on the nutrients delivered to the stream and (iv) by development of an event based modelling approach to simulate the effect seasonal rainfall events on the performance of structural and non-structural best management practices adopted for nonpoint source pollution control. This research will provide a relatively simple tool to identify the location for the application of best management practices in agricultural watersheds and an approach to evaluate the performance of structural and non-structural adopted for nonpoint source pollution control in agricultural watersheds. Though the focus of this research has been the Ontario conditions, the results will be applicable to other regions of the country. The ultimate beneficiary will be society and humanity, who will be benefited from potential source water protection and water quality improvements.