The effects of disproportional load contributions on quantifying vegetated filter strip sediment trapping efficiencies

Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment volume 32, pages2369–2380(2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Vegetated filter strips (VFSs) are a best management practice (BMP) commonly implemented adjacent to row-cropped fields to trap overland transport of sediment and other constituents present in agricultural runoff. Although they have been widely adopted, insufficient data exist to understand their short and long-term effectiveness. High inter-event variability in performance has been observed, yet the majority of studies report average removal efficiencies over observed or simulated events, ignoring the disproportional effects of loads into and out of VFSs over longer periods of time. We argue that due to positively correlated sediment concentration-discharge relationships, disproportional contribution of runoff events transporting sediment over the course of a year (i.e., temporal inequality), decreased performance with increasing flow rates, and effects of antecedent moisture condition, VFS removal efficiencies over annual time scales may be significantly lower than reported per-event averages. By applying a stochastic approach, we investigated the extent of disparity between reporting average efficiencies from each runoff event over the course of 1 year versus the total annual load reduction. Additionally, we examined the effects of soil texture, concentration-discharge relationship, and VFS slope in contributing to this disparity, with the goal of revealing potential errors that may be incurred by ignoring the effects of temporal inequality in quantifying VFS performance. Simulation results suggest that ignoring temporal inequality can lead to overestimation of annual performance by as little as < 2% and to as much as > 20%, with the greatest disparities observed for soils with high clay content.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported, in part, by a USDA-Conservation Innovation Grant and USDA Grant #2017-67019-26374. Heather Gall is supported, in part, by the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment. Daniel Schultz worked on this research as an undergraduate student in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Penn State and was funded by several undergraduate research programs at Penn State (College of Engineering Research Experience for Undergraduates and the Erickson Discovery Grant).

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Heather E. Gall, Daniel Schultz & Cibin Raj

  2. United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, Pasture Systems and Watershed Management Research Unit, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Tamie L. Veith & Sarah C. Goslee

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Alfonso Mejia & Cibin Raj

  4. Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA

    Ciaran J. Harman

  5. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA

    Ciaran J. Harman

  6. Department of Animal Science, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Paul H. Patterson

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  1. Heather E. Gall
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Correspondence to Heather E. Gall.

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Gall, H.E., Schultz, D., Veith, T. et al. The effects of disproportional load contributions on quantifying vegetated filter strip sediment trapping efficiencies. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 32, 2369–2380 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-017-1505-x

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Keywords

  • Average annual efficiency
  • Vegetated filter strips
  • Water quality
  • Sediment
  • Agricultural runoff
  • BMPs