Study Area
The River Reda is situated in northern Poland close to Tricity (Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Sopot), the largest urban zone on the Polish seaside (Fig. 1). Its drainage area is equal to 482 km2, which makes it the largest sub-watershed of the Puck Bay watershed. The Puck Lagoon is a very shallow coastal water body, which is particularly sensitive to eutrophication due to its limited water exchange with the outer part of the Puck Bay (Krzymin´ski and Kamin´ska 2005). It belongs to the marine area of the Nadmorski Landscape Park, a designated HELCOM Baltic Sea Protected Area.
Average (1991–2010) daily minimum and maximum temperatures at the nearby IMGW station in Gdynia are −1.5 and 2.9°C for January, and 15.4 and 21.5°C for July, while the annual mean basin-averaged precipitation is 793 mm. The watershed is characterized by a hilly landscape, particularly in its southern part that belongs to the Kashubian Lakeland where the maximum elevation reaches 234 m.a.s.l. and sandy soils dominate the landscape. In the northern part, the Reda-Łeba ice marginal valley is filled with peat deposits that stretch from west to east. Agricultural land occupying 51.2 % of the watershed area is the predominant land cover class, while forests are the second-largest class occupying 41.6 %. The proximity of a large metropolitan area is reflected in the share of urban (mainly low density residential) land which yields 6.6 %.
Most of the farms in studied area are rather small in size [only 28 % of farms are larger than 10 ha, which is still much higher than the average (15 %) in Poland (GUS 2011)]. Mean farm size in Poland is several times smaller than in western European countries in the same climatic zone: Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands (Banski 2010). Crops cultivated on arable land include the dominant spring cereals on better quality soils in the northwestern part of the basin and extensive farming of winter cereals and potatoes on poor quality soils in the southern part of the basin. The majority of grasslands are cultivated as permanent meadows and pastures. The share of commercial crop production in global agricultural production is estimated to be only 30 %, while the remaining crop production is used mainly for a farm’s livestock feeding. Mean livestock density was estimated at 0.56 LSU ha−1 with a dominance of pigs, which is well below 1.5 LSU ha−1, the maximum allowed livestock density considered to be not harmful to the environment in the Polish best practices codex.
According to measurements taken by Szymczak and Piekarek-Jankowska (2007), the River Reda contributes ca. 76 % of runoff volume, 72 % of TN, and 65 % of TP to the Puck Bay (Bogdanowicz et al. 2007). TN and TP area-specific loads from the Reda watershed are similar to the loads from the Vistula and the Odra (the largest Polish watersheds representative of the country’s territory), and are significantly lower than the loads from the majority of other coastal watersheds in Poland (Fig. 2). Furthermore, according to the latest Baltic Sea Pollution Load Compilation (HELCOM 2011), area-specific loads from Polish rivers were lower as of 2006 than those shown in Fig. 2 and were relatively small compared to other Baltic states in the case of total N, and relatively large in the case of total P. In particular, they were four times lower than loads from Danish rivers in the case of total N, and 20 % lower in the case of total P, although this is partly caused by lower area-specific runoff of Polish rivers.
The nitrate nitrogen (N-NO3) and the phosphate phosphorous (P-PO4, or mineral P) are the two most dominant forms of N and P in the Reda waters (Fig. 2; Bogdanowicz et al. 2007). For this reason, we selected these two forms for modeling in this study.
Modeling Tool
SWAT is a public domain river basin scale model developed to quantify the impact of land management practices in large, complex river basins. For this study, we used the SWAT2009 rev. 528 model (Neitsch et al. 2011). We placed a short description of the model in the Electronic Supplementary Material (ESM), part A.
The SWAT model has proven to be an effective simulation tool, which is manifested by its widespread worldwide use, in particular in the BSB watersheds in Finland (Tattari et al. 2009), Sweden (Ekstrand et al. 2010), Denmark (Hoang et al. 2012), and Poland (Ostojski 2012; Piniewski 2012).
Model Setup
We performed automatic watershed delineation using a 50 m resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) acquired from the Main Centre of Geodetic and Cartographic Documentation (CODGiK) to delineate the Reda watershed into 30 subwatersheds. The mean watershed elevation was equal to 107 m.a.s.l., and 17.4 % of the land was characterized by slopes higher than 10 %. The total length of the streams in the watershed was equal to 143.8 km. A few small lakes with a total capacity below 9 mio. m3 situated in the upstream part of the watershed were represented by the pond feature in SWAT, whereas through-flow Lake Orle on the River Reda was modeled as a reservoir.
We used a land cover map from Corine Land Cover (CLC 2006; EEA 2007) in this study. The agricultural land classifications from CLC 2006 were enhanced by the map of soil quality classifications from the Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation in Puławy (IUNG-PIB), defining areas with specific crop requirements and typical fertilization levels. The SWAT input land cover map showing 13 unique land use classifications is presented in Fig. 1C.
We created a soil input map based on soil types and subtypes and a soil layer texture map from IUNG-PIB. We used the total number of 18 unique soil classifications. The dominant soil class is highly permeable sand (usually Cambisols) occupying 51 % of the basin area; 36 % is occupied by different soil types with a texture of loamy sands or sandy loams. Hydrogenic soils, a majority of which are fen peat soils, occupy 12 % of the watershed area.
An intersection of land use map, soil map, and slope classes map in the ArcSWAT interface enabled the creation of 465 HRUs with a mean area of 104 ha. Three slope classes were distinguished: below 2 %, from 2 to 10 %, and above 10 %.
We acquired daily climate data from the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, Marine Branch in Gdynia (IMGW-PIB) for the time period of 1991–2010. There were five stations with precipitation records, four stations with temperature, humidity, and wind speed records, and one station with solar radiation records. Only one station (Wejherowo) was situated inside the watershed, so all climate data apart from radiation were interpolated at a subbasin level using the Thiessen polygon method prior to using them as input in ArcSWAT (Table 1).
Table 1 Calibration and validation goodness-of-fit measures at Wejherowo gaging station (NSE—Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency; R
2—coefficient of determination; PBIAS—percent bias)
Sewage waters from Wejherowo, the largest urban area in the watershed, are transferred out of the watershed to the wastewater treatment plant in Gdynia. During a field visit in July 2011, we identified and collected water samples from four active treatment plants in the watershed. Their total daily discharge equal to 950 m3 was estimated based on data from the water cadaster available from the Regional Water Management Authority in Gdańsk. Their daily loading of the Total Suspended Sediment (TSS), TN, and TP yields were 125, 33, and 3.7 kg, respectively. Confrontation of these values with discharge and water quality measurements at Wejherowo gaging station shows that point source discharges constitute only 2.3, 4.8, and 4 % of total constituent loads, respectively. We acquired soil chemistry data from 19 agricultural fields within the watershed from the Regional Chemical-Agricultural Station in Gdańsk (OSChR). We used them to estimate initial pools of N and P in soils. The highest concentrations we observed were in organic soils cultivated as grasslands. We acquired wet atmospheric deposition data from the General Inspectorate of Environment Protection (GIOŚ). Mean concentrations of N-NH4 and N-NO3 yielded 0.66 and 0.36 mg N l−1.
Since the focus of this study was the impact of agriculture on water quality, we devoted special attention in the SWAT setup to defining agricultural management practices. We acquired necessary data and expert information from the Pomeranian Agricultural Advisory Board in Gdańsk (PODR) and the Central Statistical Office (GUS 2011, 2012, 2013). We collected all the necessary data at the commune level, the smallest administrative unit in Poland. The area delineated by the four largest communes overlapping with the watershed covers 82 % of agricultural land within the watershed, which is assumed to be satisfactory from the point of view of data representativeness.
Defining crop structure in SWAT requires some generalization of official statistics. We defined seven major crops grown on arable land: winter cereals (rye), spring cereals (oats and spring wheat), potatoes, field peas, red clover, and spring canola. Cereals and potatoes, cultivated in a traditional extensive manner rather than in an intensive manner, constituted nearly 90 % of total arable land area. Mean mineral fertilizer usage in 1998–2006 yielded 40 kg N ha−1 and 11 kg P ha−1; however, real doses used by farmers are crop-dependent and presumably higher, as given figures refer to the total area of agricultural land, which includes, e.g., fallow land and grassland, where mineral fertilizers are never or rarely used. Organic fertilizers used by farmers in the Reda watershed include solid manure and slurry. They are predominantly spread on grassland fields and potato fields (only solid manure). We verified organic fertilizer doses against livestock data from official statistics.
Model Calibration
We placed a full description of the calibration strategy in the ESM, part B. A short summary is given below. We calibrated and validated SWAT using daily discharge data at three gages: Bolszewo, Zamostne, and Wejherowo, and using bimonthly TSS, N-NO3, and P-PO4, loads measured at Wejherowo station. We acquired discharge data from IMGW-PIB and water quality measurement data from GIOŚ. The calibration and validation periods were 1998–2002 and 2003–2006, respectively. We applied the SUFI-2 automatic calibration tool from SWAT-CUP software (Abbaspour 2008). We set the Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) as an objective function (Moriasi et al. 2007). Additionally, we evaluated best simulations using R
2 and percent bias (PBIAS), and characterized the whole set of good simulations in terms of the uncertainty measures (cf. ESM; Abbaspour 2008).
Future Scenario Assumptions
For this study, we selected the period centered around 2050 as the time horizon of future scenarios. Two major driving forces of future watershed change are climate and land use. In this context, climate change is understood as a projected change in precipitation and temperature (from a given climate model) as well as in atmospheric CO2 concentration (from a given emission scenario driving a climate model). Land use change is understood here as any alteration of human utilization of land surface and thus is not limited to land cover change, but can also include, for example, intensification of agricultural production. While climate change projections for the Reda watershed were downscaled from a climate model, general assumptions of land use change were established in a framework of the Baltic Compass project. Within this project two National Round Tables gathering agricultural researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners were organized in 2011 and 2012 in Poland. Additionally, three workshops focused on the Reda watershed, involving both experts from local extension services (in Gdańsk office and Wejherowo branch) as well as local water management authorities (IMGW-PIB in Gdynia) were organized in 2011 and 2012. Modeling results were being communicated to experts and stakeholders at each stage of the process; hence, the approach of creating these scenarios followed to some extent methodology previously outlined in SCENES (Giełczewski et al. 2011; Kämäri et al. 2011).
We acquired the climate projections by ECHAM5 GCM driven by the SRES A1B emission scenario and coupled with RCA3 RCM from the Swedish Hydrological and Meteorological Institute (SHMI) (Samuelsson et al. 2011). The A1B scenario assumes a future world of very rapid economic growth, low population growth, and rapid introduction of new and more efficient technology. This scenario has been selected, as it assumes a balanced emphasis on all energy sources and its projections of future greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations by 2050 are in the middle of the range of SRES family projections. We used output data from two 50-by-50 km grid points from the RCA3 model overlapping with the Reda watershed. We applied the delta change approach to represent the future climate in SWAT (Fowler et al. 2007). First, we calculated the delta factors using the RCM output data for two time periods, one representing the current climate (1984–2013) and one representing the future climate (2035–2064). We calculated precipitation monthly factors multiplicatively and temperature additively. Second, we used calculated delta factors as input in SWAT. Figure 3 illustrates basin-averaged downscaled projections of monthly precipitation and temperatures for the 2050s versus those in the current situation. The mean annual temperature increase equals 1.3°C and varies from 0.8°C in December to 2.2°C in February. The projected annual precipitation increase yields 80 mm (10 %), although in several months there is a projected decrease in precipitation.
Apart from changes in climate variables, according to RCM projections, we made two additional changes to better represent the future climatic conditions. We estimated future atmospheric CO2 concentration (ppm) based on projections of greenhouse emissions associated with the SRES A1B scenario. A 50 % increase in CO2 was used as an input SWAT parameter representing future conditions. Furthermore, we adjusted two SWAT parameters to better account for changes in plant physiological parameters driven by an increase in CO2 concentration than in the original SWAT code: the stomatal conductance GSI and the maximum leaf area index BLAI (cf. Piniewski 2012 for more details).
While climate change in the Reda watershed is driven mainly by global-scale factors, land use change is related to factors acting on various scales: climate, population growth, future national and EU policies (in such domains as agriculture and spatial planning), local and global food demand, etc. Projections of land cover change due to population growth (or decline) are probably the least uncertain ones. The study area has experienced a rapid growth of urban sprawl in recent years: According to data from the Central Statistical Office (GUS 2012) mean annual population growth from 1995 to 2011 was 3 % in rural areas and 0.3 % in urban areas. Furthermore, the highest annual growth rate, up to 4 %, was found in communes situated closest to the Tricity metropolitan area. According to stakeholders, this growth caused two types of land cover change: (1) urban sprawl of the cities (Wejherowo and Reda) and (2) transformation of marginal land in rural areas into residential areas. This trend is supposed to continue in the foreseeable future: In Wejherowo County, covering ca. 90 % of the Reda watershed, the expected mean annual population growth from 2011 to 2035 is 0.85 % in urban areas and 1.27 % in rural areas (GUS 2012). These figures were extrapolated until 2050 and transformed into urban land cover growth, as land cover change in contrast to population growth can be directly represented in SWAT. The calculated value of the future increment in the area of low density residential land cover (cf. Fig. 1C) yielded 909 ha, which is 30 % of the current area of this land cover class (cf. ESM, part C for details on calculation of this value).
While urban sprawl in the Reda watershed seems inevitable, there is uncertainty related to the future of agriculture. Therefore, on the top of urban land cover change, we developed two agricultural scenarios for this area: one assuming spontaneous development of agriculture and the second its rapid intensification. The first scenario—hereafter referred to as the Business-as-Usual (BAU-2050)—assumes adaptation of production to rising temperatures (e.g., earlier sowing dates, longer growing periods) and takes into account some of the recently observed trends (e.g., biogas plants using corn silage as a substrate); however, crop structure, animal production, and fertilizer usage remain either unchanged or only slightly altered compared to the reference state. In contrast, the second scenario—hereafter referred to as the Major Shift in Agriculture (MSA-2050)—assumes that Poland (and the Reda watershed in particular) will experience a major change in agriculture. A rapid growth in the export of Polish agricultural products in recent years (Fig. 4) accompanied by a considerable growth in the share of commercial production in global agricultural production increased from 62 % in 1990 to 70 % in 2006 (from 62 % in 1990 to 70 % in 2006; Bański 2010) form a background for this scenario. Furthermore, the growth potential of Polish agriculture has not yet been depleted, because in 2008, its labor productivity was 3.5 times lower than in the European Union (EU-27; Poczta et al. 2012). New conditions for rural development now exist under the Common Agricultural Policy, so in the future, Polish agriculture might resemble the intensive agriculture of some of its neighboring Western countries like Denmark, Germany, or Sweden. In order to create a coherent and plausible scenario and for practical reasons, we selected one country, Denmark, as a good model for what Poland will ultimately resemble. We think that both scenarios form a range of possible changes that Polish agriculture is likely to undergo in the future: a shift into Danish-type intensive agriculture in the Reda watershed is the upper limit of possible changes, whereas the BAU scenario is its lower limit. We made the following assumptions in developing the MSA-2050 scenario:
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We acquired agricultural statistical data for the year 2010 for Denmark (DST 2011) and the main communes of the Reda watershed (GUS 2011);
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We adapted the livestock structure and density from Danish conditions in order to assess the availability of organic fertilizers;
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We adapted the crop structure from Danish conditions, assuming that the total agricultural area would be the same as in BAU-2050; increasing the import of fodder (Fig. 4) supports this assumption;
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Due to the substantial availability of organic fertilizers, we reduced the utilization of mineral fertilizers and replaced them with organic ones (mainly slurry).
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We adapted fertilizer rates from Danish standards (MF 2011) and fit them to the soil structure and application timing present in the SWAT setup of the Reda watershed. Even though these rates are several times higher than those applied at present, there are areas in Poland where such rates of slurry are applied (Soroko and Strzelczyk 2009).
The quantitative characterization of scenario assumptions and their representation in the SWAT setup is presented in Table 2. Developed agricultural scenarios were represented in SWAT by modifications of HRU tables with scheduled management practices.
Table 2 Comparison of two developed agricultural scenarios for the Reda watershed in 2050s
Adaptation Measures
The starting point for selecting proper adaptation measures was the list of prioritized measures elaborated by the Baltic COMPASS project.Footnote 1 These reports constitute the most up-to-date knowledge on utilization of BMPs in the Baltic countries. The list contains 25 different measures mainly focused on reducing nutrient losses from agriculture at different stages of production. The final selection of measures, made with stakeholders’ advice, was a trade-off forced by model limitations (not all interesting measures can be represented in SWAT). Finally, four measures were selected as valuable for stakeholders and possible for modeling in SWAT (cf. Tattari et al. 2009; Lam et al. 2011; Laurent and Ruelland 2011; Glavan et al. 2012):
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1.
Vegetative cover in autumn and winter (VC)
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2.
Buffer zones along water areas and erosion-sensitive field areas (BZ)
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3.
Avoiding fertilization in risk areas (RA)
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4.
Constructed wetlands for nutrient reduction/retention (CW)
In order to implement measure VC, that is supposed to have an anti-erosive function as well as to reduce nitrogen leaching to groundwater, we made modifications in scheduled management practices in the model structure. Red clover was used as a catch crop after harvest of spring cereals and corn silage, whereas rye was used as a catch crop after harvest of potatoes. This measure was defined in 47.4 and 55.8 % of agricultural land in BAU-2050 and MSA-2050, respectively.
We implemented measure BZ using the vegetative filter strip (VFS) sub-model of SWAT (Neitsch et al. 2011) that uses different empirical reduction rate equations (White and Arnold 2009). VFSs were defined in all agricultural land HRUs. The drainage area to VFS area ratio in an HRU was defined as 10. VFS function was activated in 100 % of agricultural land.
We represented measure RA in the model as follows: Fertilizer rates were reduced by 50 % in the schedule of management practices in SWAT in selected HRUs referred to as “Risk area” HRUs (those HRUs with agricultural land use that satisfied at least one of the following features: (1) slopes above 10 %; (2) tile drainage operation; (3) heavy soils. This measure was defined in 19.6 % of agricultural land).
We represented measure CW in SWAT using its wetland function, in which sediment and nutrients are removed in wetlands by settling (Neitsch et al. 2011). This function was activated in all sub-basins with a share of agricultural land use above 50 %. A wetland area was defined to be 1 % of the agricultural area in the respective sub-basin, while the volume was calculated assuming a 1 m storage depth. The fraction of sub-basin area draining to the wetland area was defined as 10 %, since it is assumed that CWs are small water bodies built in upstream areas in small ditches and creeks or in natural depressions. This measure was defined in 0.96 % of agricultural land (in terms of land occupied by a wetland area). However, in reality, it affected 10 % of the agricultural area—the whole area draining to the wetland.
Measure CW was the only one that was tested only under the MSA-2050 scenario since it was assumed that under BAU-2050 CW will not gain much more popularity in Poland than they have today. At present, CWs are not used by Polish farmers to retain nutrients flushed from fields, while they are sometimes used as small-scale wastewater treatment plants.
Model Scenario Design
Two possibilities of future climate (Current or ECHAM5-RCA3-SRESA1B climate) combined with three possibilities of future land use (Current, BAU, or MSA land use) produced six unique combinations of model experiments (Table 3). Such an experimental design allows one to study single effects (climate or land use) and combined effects (climate and land use). In the next step, adaptation measures were implemented into two combined future scenarios: BAU-CC-2050 and MSA-CC-2050 (Table 3).
Table 3 Model scenario design
For each model experiment, we calculated four variables (model outputs):
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Mean annual discharge to the Puck Lagoon (Q);
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Basin-averaged mean annual N-NO3 leaching past the bottom of soil profile to shallow groundwater aquifer (NG);
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Mean annual N-NO3 load to the Puck Lagoon (N);
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Mean annual P-PO4 load to the Puck Lagoon (P).
Comparison of model runs 2–6 with model run 1 enables the study of single or combined effects of climate and land use change on the abovementioned variables. For a variable X (that can be substituted by Q, NG, N, or P), a respective indicator ΔX
1 was calculated as follows:
$$ \Updelta X_{1} = \frac{{X_{\text{scenario}} - X_{\text{baseline}} }}{{X_{\text{baseline}} }} \times 100\,\% . $$
(1)
Comparison of model runs 7–10 with model run 5 or model runs 11–15 with model run 6 enables one to study the efficiency of adaptation measures under future climate and land use conditions. For a variable X, a respective indicator ΔX
2 was calculated as follows:
$$ \Updelta X_{2} = \frac{{X_{\text{adaptation}} - X_{\text{scenario}} }}{{X_{\text{scenario}} }} \times 100\,\% $$
(2)
Finally, comparison of model runs 7–15 with model run 1 enables one to assess what the combined effect of climate change, land use change, and applying an adaptation measure will be compared to the reference state. For a variable X, we calculated a respective indicator ΔX
3 as follows:
$$ \Updelta X_{3} = \frac{{X_{\text{adaptation}} - X_{\text{baseline}} }}{{X_{\text{baseline}} }} \times 100\% . $$
(3)