Source: UNIV OF NORTH DAKOTA submitted to NRP
EVALUATING MARKET AND POLICY EFFECTS ON WATER QUALITY IN BIOFUEL FEEDSTOCK PRODUCTION SYSTEMS IN UPPER MIDWEST MARGINAL LANDS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1004724
Grant No.
2013-67010-21358
Cumulative Award Amt.
$555,000.00
Proposal No.
2013-03902
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2013
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2018
Grant Year
2013
Program Code
[A6126]- Impacts of Regional Bioenergy Systems on Water Availability and Quality
Recipient Organization
UNIV OF NORTH DAKOTA
(N/A)
GRAND FORKS,ND 58201
Performing Department
Earth System Science and Polic
Non Technical Summary
The overall goal of this proposed project is to assess the impact of cultivating cellulosic bioenergy crops driven by the crop market/bioenergy policy on water sustainability. The potential impact will be analyzed and contrasted in two river basins in the Upper Midwest - the Red River of the North basin (bordering MN, ND, and SD) and the Republican River basin (bordering KS, NE and CO), each with distinctive hydrological characteristics and irrigation scheme-to understand the water implications (both positive and negative) and identify the most sustainable biomass feedstock for the region's water resource. The project will focus on growing switchgrass and collecting crop residuals from wheat and sorghum under various management practices (crop rotation, fertilization inputs, tillage, residual collection, and irrigation) on marginal land. To accomplish the goal, we will develop a coupled economics-hydrology model with inputs derived from both satellite and field observations to: 1) estimate how the land use on marginal land would change in response to the market and policy regarding the production of advanced biofuel; 2) assess how such land use change would affect water quality and quantity in the watersheds. This novel analytical framework will provide decision support for evaluating hydrologic consequences of biofuel feedstock production under various policy and climate scenarios. The outcome from this project will help policymakers, farmers, and the society better understand the environmentalbenefit/consequences in meeting the EISA of 2007's goal of advanced biofuel.
Animal Health Component
40%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
40%
Developmental
30%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1310320301050%
1020210205050%
Knowledge Area
102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships; 131 - Alternative Uses of Land;

Subject Of Investigation
0320 - Watersheds; 0210 - Water resources;

Field Of Science
2050 - Hydrology; 3010 - Economics;
Keywords
Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of this proposed project is to assess the impact on water sustainability of cultivating cellulosic bioenergy crops driven by the crop market/bioenergy policy. The potential impact will be analyzed and contrasted in two major river basins in the Upper Midwest - the Red River of the North basin (bordering MN, ND, and SD) and the Republican River basin (bordering KS, NE and CO), each has distinctive hydrological characteristics and irrigation scheme. The Red River of the North basin has received an equivalent of 2-3 years additional precipitation in the past two decades (Jin et al. 2008) while the Republican River basin has been in groundwater deficit since 1970's (Sophocleous 2005). The analysis will focus on growing cellulosic bioenergy crop, switchgrass and collecting crop residuals from wheat and sorghum, under various management practices (crop rotation, fertilization inputs, tillage, residual collection, and irrigation) on marginal land to identify the most sustainable biomass production for the region's water resource.
Project Methods
The key technical approach is to combine economic and hydrological models to examine market/policy-driven individual decision making on advanced biofuel feedstock production and collective impact on marginal land use and water resource.The crop growth module in the calibrated SWAT models will estimate the potential crop yields for each identified parcel at the HUC-10 level under various management practices. The economic model will incorporate the crop yields into the individual decision making and run optimization process for each of these parcels to determine the land allocation as well as the best management practices. This process will be carried out on a parcel by parcel basis for the identified marginal area in the two watersheds. The data from satellite observations, existing field networks, and field experiments will be usedto calibrate and improve the SWAT models. The calibrated SWAT models will be run under a probabilistic framework to take into account of model uncertainties associated model parameters and future land use distributions.

Progress 09/01/13 to 08/31/18

Outputs
Target Audience:Over the years, our team has shared our research findings with various stakeholders including state government agencies, state water commission, state water resource management advisory board, department of health, as well as academia researchers and interested individual farmers. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project partially supported two M.S. student Sharmin Sultana (majored in Nature Resource Management), Mansurat Abdulmalik Ali (majored in Earth System Science and Policy), and two PhD student Afshin, Shabani and Morgen Burke (both majored in Earth System Sciencd and Policy). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Over the years, our team has shared our research findings with various stakeholders including ND state government agencies, ND state water commission, ND state water resource management advisory board, ND department of health, as well as academia researchers and interested individual farmers. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Model Development and Coupling: We developed a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for the Red River of the North Basin. The subbasins were pre-defined by the 10-digit Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC-10) watershed boundary datasets. The study area was divided into 178 HUC-10 subbasins. National Hydrography Datasets, 5-meter LiDAR-based DEM, The SSURGO database, NASS Crop Data Layers, and daily observations of precipitation and temperature from 40 NOAA's Cooperative Observer Network's weather stations were used to develop the Red River Basin SWAT model. The fertilizer application rates for the crops grown in the region followed the North Dakota fertilizer recommendation. The SWAT model was then calibrated against crop yields, streamflows, suspended sediment concentrations, and nutrient (N and P) loads measured in the rivers during 2007-2012. We also developed a SWAT model for the Republican River Basin. The subbasins were pre-defined by the 10-digit Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC-10) watershed boundary datasets. For climate scenario analysis, we assessed the impacts of climate change on 4 potential bioenergy crop productions in the Republican River Basin using a set of crop simulation models. We generated medium and high emission weather scenarios for short term (2045) and long term (2075) climate changes using IPSL-CM5A-MR, a General Circulation Model (GCM), of MarkSim. The growth and yield of the crops under present and future climate scenarios were simulated using CSM-CERES-Maize, CSM-CERES-Sorghum, CSM-CROPGRO-Soybean, and CSM-CERES-Beet models of the Decision Support Systems for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) v.4.7. Model simulations were done for 12 counties of the 3 states within RRB. In order to couple the SWAT and economic land use models, we first ran the SWAT model to obtain distributed crop yields for different management practices such as fertilization rates. The synthetic crop yields were used as input variables for the economic land use model, whose output will be the land-use distribution probabilities. The linked system has the capability to model the feedback impacts between land use and water implications through crop productivity. For economic scenario analysis, we implemented five land-use scenarios. (1) NASS 2006 scenario based on USDA-NASS land-use data in 2006; (2)NASS 2013 scenario based on USDA-NASS land-use data in 2013; (3) Corn Demand (+20%) scenario with 20% increases in the national corn demand; (4) Corn Demand (+60%) scenario with 60% increases in corn demand; (5) Grassland (+$40/ac) scenario assumes an incentive of $40 per acre for grasslands. To couple the SWAT model with remote sensing and field observation inputs, we developed we developed a hydrodynamic and water quality model (CE-QUAL-W2) to simulate temperature, sulfate concentration, and water quality constituents in Devils Lake. Both hydrodynamic and water quality simulation in CE-QUAL2-W2 depend on accurate representation of bathymetry. We developed a toolbox in Arc-GIS to divide the lake into grids that consist of 96 longitudinal segments (1 km wide for each segment) and a maximum of 17 vertical layers (1.5 meter deep for each layer). Hourly meteorological data of temperature, dew point, wind speeds and directions, cloud cover and precipitation were downloaded from the Devils Lake weather station. SWAT-simulated flow, TSS, and total phosphorus (TP) and nitrogen (TN) were provided to CE-QUAL-W2 as input. Water temperature for inflow tributaries was estimated following Neitsch et al. (2011). CE-QUAL-W2 has ability to consider different type of artificial outflow such as pump, withdraw, spillway, etc. Two emergency outlets in Devils Lake were considered as withdraw in our model. Summary and discussion of results Red River of the North Basin: The enactment of the EISA of 2007 in the US has contributed to widespread changes in agricultural land uses. In the Red River Basin within the US, the areas for corn and soybean have increased by 62% and 18% from 2006 to 2013; while those for spring wheat, forest, and pasture have decreased by 30%, 18%, and 50%, respectively, in the same time period. Other crops that have seen increased planting areas also include sugarbeet, canola, dry beans, and alfalfa; while small grains, mainly barley and oats, have decreased in their planting areas. Although the magnitude of spring snowmelt peak flows did not change from pre-EISA to post-EISA, our uncertainty analysis of the normalized hydrographs revealed that the downstream streamflows (for example, at Grand Forks, ND) had a greater variability under the post-EISA land use scenario, which may have led to greater uncertainty in predicting spring snowmelt floods. SWAT simulation also showed that the sediment and nutrient loads at the basin's outlet increased under the post-EISA land use scenario. On average sediment increased by 2.6%, TP by 14.1%, nitrate nitrogen by 5.9%, and TN by 9.1%. The maximum load increase for total nitrogen occurred under the post-EISA land-use scenario. However, the maximum load increase for nitrate occurred under the 60% higher national corn demand scenario. Republican River Basin: Our results from the modeling approach show that increased temperature accelerated physiological maturity of the crops that was reflected by their reduced length of growing season (LGS) by 1% to 13%. A gradual decrease in the predicted yields for all the bioenergy crops, except sorghum, were observed for the simulated future climate scenarios. For sorghum, predicted yields were increased by 3-5% in Colorado and Nebraska. Among the crops, yields of maize were reduced most and reduction ranged between 24-54%. In general, water use efficiency for yield productions were decreased with the changing climate, indicating a potential risk in reduced biomass production and increased irrigation water demands in RRB in the future. In a published empirical study, our results show that land use in the region could not explain the observed changes in nitrate flux in the river. Instead, after including explanatory variables such as precipitation, growing degree days, and well water irrigation in the regression model we found that irrigation and spring precipitation could explain >85% of the variability in nitrate flux from 2000 to 2014. This suggests that changes in crop acreage and production alone cannot explain variability in nitrate flux. Future agricultural policy for the region should focus on controlling both the timing and amount of fertilizer applied to the field to reduce the potential leaching of excess fertilizer through spring time runoff and/or over-irrigation into nearby river systems. Devils Lake, ND: The results from coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2 model showed a general increase of sulfate concentration from west to east of Devils Lake, which at the east end (~ 1700 mg l-1) is ~3 times greater than at the west side (~600 mg l-1). This west-east gradient is caused by overall high concentration of sulfate in the eastern part and stronger dilution in the western side of the lake by relatively fresher water flowing in through Big Coulee and Channel A tributaries. The operation of the outlets, while releasing the pressure of rising water in Devils Lake, has led to significant degradation of water quality for Sheyenne River. With an average sulfate concentration of 105 mg l-1 in the upstream of Sheyenne River before the outlets, we estimated that during the outlet operation period from April to November, pumping water from the west outlet alone would raise the sulfate concentration to 457 mg l-1, with the east outlet alone to 585 mg l-1, and with both to 536 mg l-1. For comparison the EPA standard of sulfate concentration is < 250 mg l -1 for drinking water.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Xiong, M. Z. Lin, and G. Padmanabhan (2018). Impact of bioenergy policy induced land use change on water quality under changing climate in the Northern Great Plains of the USA. Int. J. Global Environmental Issues 17(4): 364-390
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Chu, X.; Z. Lin; M. Nasab; L. Zeng; K. Grimm; M. Bazrkar; N. Wang; X. Liu; X. Zhang; H. Zheng (2018) Macro-scale grid-based and subbasin-based hydrologic modeling: joint simulation and cross-calibration. Journal of Hydroinformatics, Accepted, https://doi.org/10.2166/hydro.2018.026
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Tahmasebi Nassab M., Kendall, G., Bazrkar, M., Zeng, L., Shabani, A., Zhang, X., Chu, X. 2018. SWAT Modeling of Non-point Source Pollution in Depression-Dominated Basins under Varying Hydroclimatic Conditions. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 5 (11), 2492.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2018 Citation: Shabani, A. Xiaodong Zhang, Xuefeng Chu, Timothy P. Dodd, and Haochi Zheng, 2018. Water Quality Conservation in mitigating Devils Lake Flooding. Journal of American Water Resource Association
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Burke, M. W. V.; M. Shaharbi; Y. Xu; H. Zheng*; X. Zhang; J. VanLooy (2018) Identifying the driving factors of water quality in a sub-watershed of the Republican River Basin, Kansas USA. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 15(5): 1041.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. 2017. Modeling Water Quantity and Sulfate Concentration in the Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. Journal of American Water Resources Assessment. 53 (4), 748-760.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Kharel, G; H. Zheng; A. Kirilenko (2016) Can land-use change mitigate long-term flood risks in the Prairie Pothole Region? The case of Devils Lake, North Dakota, USA Regional Environmental Change 16(8): 2443-2456.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Lin, Z., M.J. Anar, H. Zheng (2015). Hydrologic and water-quality impacts of agricultural land use changes incurred from bioenergy policies. Journal of Hydrology 525:429-440.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Shabani, A, Zhang, X., Mike Ell. And Timothy P. Dood. 2018. Examining the impact of Devils Lake outlets on flood risk of the Sheyenne River. Bismarck, North Dakota, March 6-8.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X. 2017. Estimated water surface temperature using Landsat 8 TIR bands using the split window algorithm. NDGIS user Conference, Bismarck, North Dakota, 19-20 September.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X. 2017. Estimated water surface temperature using Landsat 8 TIR bands using a split window algorithm. Great Plains / Rocky Mountains American Association of Geographers conference. Grand Forks, North Dakota, 13-14 October.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X. 2017. Examining the impact of Devils Lake outlet on the flood risk of the Sheyenne River. American Geophysical Union conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, 11-15 December.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Sultana, S. and Z. Lin (2017). Groundwater quality risk assessment. North Dakota EPSCoR 2017 State Conference, April 12, Fargo, North Dakota. Poster.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Lin, Z., and H. Zheng (2016). Hydrologic and water-quality impacts of agricultural land use changes incurred from bioenergy policies. North Dakota Water Quality Monitoring Conference, March 2-4, 2016, Bismarck, ND.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Kirilenko, A., Kharel*, G. , Zheng, H., Gulbin*, S (2016), Effects of climate and land use change on the long-term flooding in the Devils Lake, North Dakota watershed, Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, March, San Francisco, CA.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X., Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water Quantity and Sulfate Concentration in Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. American Geophysical Union conference, San Francisco (Oral presentation)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water Quantity and Quality in the Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. Water Quality Conference, South Dakota University, Brookings. (Oral presentation).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. 2015. Modeling Water Quantity and Quality in the Devils Lake Watershed Using SWAT Model. SWAT Conference, Purdue University, Laffayette (Oral presentation).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Lin, Z., and H. Zheng (2015). Impacts of biofuel-induced agricultural land use changes on watershed hydrology and water quality. AGU Fall Meeting, Abstract H53N-07. December 14-18, 2015, San Francisco, CA (Invited).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Lin, Z. (2015). Agricultural land-use changes incurred from bioenergy policies and their impacts on hydrology and water quality in the Red River Basin. 2015 ASABE North Central Intersectional Conference, April 10-11, 2015, Fargo, ND.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Silvis, B. and H. Zheng (2015) The Impact of policy and economic drivers of corn production on nitrogen levels of the buffalo river subbasin, MN, 2006-2014, selected paper presentation at the GSA 2015 North-Central Section Meeting, Madison, WI
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: Lin, Z., M. Xiong, and G. Padmanabhan (2014). Developing nutrient TMDLs for Lake Ashtabula (North Dakota) under climate and land use changes. 2014 World Environmental and Water Resources Congress, June 1-5, 2014, Portland, OR.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: Lin, Z. (2014). Evaluating the impacts of growing bioenergy crops on water supply and quality in the Red River of the North basin. 2014 American Water Resources Association Annual Conference, November 2-6, 2014, Tysons Corner, VA.
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Brent Silvis (2016). An Assessment of the Influence of Economic Drivers of Land Use Change and Nitrate Concentrations in the Red River of the North, USA. Department of Earth System Science and Policy, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Mengqi Xiong (2016). Land Use and Climate Impact on Sediment and Nutrient Loads into Lake Ashtabula, North Dakota, USA. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND.
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Sharmin Sultana (2017). Groundwater Quality Vulnerability Assessment in North Dakota. M.S. Thesis. School of Natural Resource Sciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Afshin Shabani (2018). The Impact of the Wet Climate Cycle on Water Quantity and Quality of Devils Lake and Sheyenne River, ND, USA. Department of Earth System Science and Policy, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND


Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/17

Outputs
Target Audience: Nothing Reported Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project partially supported two M.S. student Sharmin Sultana (majored in Nature Resource Management), Mansurat Abdulmalik Ali (majored in Earth System Science and Policy), and two PhD student Afshin, Shabani and Morgen Burke (both majored in Earth System Sciencd and Policy). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results have been shared with the stakeholders in multiple levels, ND state water commission, ND water resource research institute advisory board, ND department of Health, and presented our results in multiple regional, national, and international conferences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? 1. Major activities completed We conduct research to determine the impacts of climate change on 4 potential bioenergy crop productions in the Republican River Basin (RRB) using a set of crop simulation models. We generated medium and high emission weather scenarios for short term (2045) and long term (2075) climate changes using IPSL-CM5A-MR, a General Circulation Model (GCM), of MarkSim. The growth and yield of the crops under present and future climate scenarios were simulated using CSM-CERES-Maize, CSM-CERES-Sorghum, CSM-CROPGRO-Soybean, and CSM-CERES-Beet models of the Decision Support Systems for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) v.4.7. Model simulations were done for 12 counties of the 3 states within RRB. In the Red River region, we have continued our efforts in coupling the SWAT model and CE-QUAL-W2 model developed for Devils Lake, ND. The coupled system has the capability of estimating the evaluating the impact of Devils Lake outlets on discharge and sulfate concentration in the Sheyenne River. In addition, we also conducted flood frequency analysis to calculate the magnitude of flood-peak discharge and the associated exceedance probability based on the operation of outlets. Besides the modeling work, in a separate study, we also empirically examined the relationship of planted area, production of three dominant crops, as well as other weather and irrigation datasets, with nitrate flux in the Republican River, Kansas, a sub-watershed of Mississippi River Basin. 2. Summary and discussion of results Our study shows that increased temperature accelerated physiological maturity of the crops that was reflected by their reduced length of growing season (LGS) by 1% to 13%. A gradual decrease in the predicted yields for all the bioenergy crops, except sorghum, were observed for the simulated future climate scenarios. For sorghum, predicted yields were increased by 3-5% in Colorado and Nebraska. Among the crops, yields of maize were reduced most and reduction ranged between 24-54%. In general, water use efficiency for yield productions were decreased with the changing climate, indicating a potential risk in reduced biomass production and increased irrigation water demands in RRB in the future. In the empirical study, our results show that land use in the region could not explain the observed changes in nitrate flux in the river. Instead, after including explanatory variables such as precipitation, growing degree days, and well water irrigation in the regression model we found that irrigation and spring precipitation could explain >85% of the variability in nitrate flux from 2000 to 2014. This suggests that changes in crop acreage and production alone cannot explain variability in nitrate flux. Future agricultural policy for the region should focus on controlling both the timing and amount of fertilizer applied to the field to reduce the potential leaching of excess fertilizer through spring time runoff and/or over-irrigation into nearby river systems. In addition, the results from coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2 model show that in general outlet operations have been managed to keep the river discharge to a maximum of ~ 25 m3 s-1 at gauging station 4 which allows low lying fields along the riverbank to be farmed. Occasionally, river discharge exceeded this target when major precipitation events occurred while the outlets were operating. With the operation schedule of the two outlets, we simulated the discharge with and without the outlets. On average, pumping water from the west outlet increased discharge at gauging stations 2 and 3 from ~2 m3 s-1 to ~10 m3 s-1, and pumping from both outlets increased discharge at gauging station 4 from 8 to ~25 m3 s-1. So far, the largest impact on the Sheyenne River discharge when both outlets operate approached the two-year flood.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. 2017. Modeling Water Quantity and Sulfate Concentration in the Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. Journal of American Water Resources Assessment. 53 (4), 748-760.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Tahmasebi Nassab M., Kendall, G., Bazrkar, M., Zeng, L., Shabani, A., Zhang, X., Chu, X. 2018. SWAT Modeling of Non-point Source Pollution in Depression-Dominated Basins under Varying Hydroclimatic Conditions. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 5 (11), 2492.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Xiong, M. Z. Lin, and G. Padmanabhan (2018). Impact of bioenergy policy induced land use change on water quality under changing climate in the Northern Great Plains of the USA. Int. J. Global Environmental Issues 17(4): 364-390.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Chu, X., Z. Lin, M.T. Nasab, L. Zeng, K. Grimm, M. Bazrkar, N. Wang, X. Liu, X., Zhang, and H. Zheng (2018). Macro-scale grid-based and subbasin-based hydrologic modeling: Joint simulation and cross-calibration. Journal of Hydroinformatics (in press).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Sultana, S. and Z. Lin (2017). Groundwater quality risk assessment. North Dakota EPSCoR 2017 State Conference, April 12, Fargo, North Dakota. Poster
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X. 2017. Examining the impact of Devils Lake outlet on the flood risk of the Sheyenne River. American Geophysical Union conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, 11-15 December.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X. 2017. Estimated water surface temperature using Landsat 8 TIR bands using a split window algorithm. Great Plains / Rocky Mountains American Association of Geographers conference. Grand Forks, North Dakota, 13-14 October.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X. 2017. Estimated water surface temperature using Landsat 8 TIR bands using the split window algorithm. NDGIS user Conference, Bismarck, North Dakota, 19-20 September.
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Sharmin Sultana (2017). Groundwater Quality Vulnerability Assessment in North Dakota. M.S. Thesis. School of Natural Resource Sciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Burke, M. W. V.; M. Shaharbi; Y. Xu; H. Zheng*; X. Zhang; J. VanLooy (2018) Identifying the driving factors of water quality in a sub-watershed of the Republican River Basin, Kansas USA. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 15(5): 1041.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2018 Citation: Shabani, A. Xiaodong Zhang, Xuefeng Chu, Timothy P. Dodd, and Haochi Zheng, 2018. Water Quality Conservation in mitigating Devils Lake Flooding. Journal of American Water Resource Association.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Shabani, A, Zhang, X., Mike Ell. And Timothy P. Dood. 2018. Examining the impact of Devils Lake outlets on flood risk of the Sheyenne River. Bismarck, North Dakota, March 6-8.


Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/16

Outputs
Target Audience: Nothing Reported Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project partially supported two M.S. student Mengqi Xiong, majoring in Civil and Environmental Engineering (NDSU) and Brent Silvis, majoring in Earth System Science and Policy (UND), and one PhD student Afshin Shabani, majoring in Earth System Science and Policy (UND). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue the effort in coupling the economic land use model and SWAT model and running scenarios in assessing the price impact on water nitrates, sediment, and other water quality indices.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Red River of the North Basin: In order to couple the SWAT and economic land use models, we first run the SWAT model to obtain distributed crop yields for different management practices such as fertilization rates. The synthetic crop yields will be used as input variables for the economic land use model, whose output will be the land-use distribution probabilities. For scenario analysis, we first design different market demand and conservation policy scenarios to drive our economic model; the land-use distribution probabilities from the economic model are then fed into the hydrological and water quality model to estimate the impacts on hydrology and downstream water quality. We designed five land-use scenarios. (1) The NASS 2006 scenario is based on USDA-NASS land-use data in 2006, which is considered as a pre-EISA scenario; (2) the NASS 2013 scenario is based on USDA-NASS land-use data in 2013, which is considered as a post-EISA scenario; (3) the Corn Demand (+20%) scenario assumes the national corn demand increases 20% above the baseline scenario; (4) the Corn Demand (+60%) assumes the national corn demand increases 60% above the baseline scenario; and (5) the Grassland (+$40/ac) assumes an incentive of $40 per acre for grasslands. Devils Lake, ND: After simulating stream flow and water quality at Devils Lake watershed using SWAT model, we developed a hydrodynamic and water quality model (CE-QUAL-W2) to simulate temperature, sulfate concentration, and water quality constituents in Devils Lake. Both hydrodynamic and water quality simulation in CE-QUAL2-W2 depend on accurate representation of bathymetry. We developed a toolbox in Arc-GIS to divide the lake into grids that consist of 96 longitudinal segments (1 km wide for each segment) and a maximum of 17 vertical layers (1.5 meter deep for each layer). Hourly meteorological data of temperature, dew point, wind speeds and directions, cloud cover and precipitation were downloaded from the Devils Lake weather station. SWAT-simulated flow, TSS, and total phosphorus (TP) and nitrogen (TN) were provided to CE-QUAL-W2 as input. Water temperature for inflow tributaries was estimated following Neitsch et al. (2011). CE-QUAL-W2 has ability to consider different type of artificial outflow such as pump, withdraw, spillway, etc. Two emergency outlets in Devils Lake were considered as withdraw in our model. Our simulated water temperature profiles with CE-QUAL-W2 model were consistent with the field measurements which have been conducted seasonally. The lake temperature changes significantly, from ~ 2-3 °C during the winter to ~ 22-23 °C during the late summer and early fall. The simulated water temperature profiles indicate that water is well mixed for spring, summer and fall seasons, consistent with the observation. Time series of simulated temperature was compared with observed values (buoy's measurement). The result of time series comparison was good, with R2 > 0.97 and an absolute errors < 0.85 °C. A comparison was made between observed and simulated sulfate concentrations at different locations in Devils Lake from 2008 to 2014, which indicates that the model performed well in simulating sulfate (R2 > 0.85). Our simulation showed a general increase of sulfate concentration from west to east of Devils Lake, which at the east end (~ 1700 mg l-1) is ~3 times greater than at the west side (~600 mg l-1). This west-east gradient is caused by overall high concentration of sulfate in the eastern part and stronger dilution in the western side of the lake by relatively fresher water flowing in through Big Coulee and Channel A tributaries. The operation of the outlets, while releasing the pressure of rising water in Devils Lake, has led to significant degradation of water quality for Sheyenne River. Since the average sulfate concentration near the east outlet (~1000 mg l-1) is much higher than the west outlet (~600 mg l-1) and the rate of discharge from the east outlet is also higher, pumping water from east outlet cause more serious degradation of the water quality in Sheyenne River. With an average sulfate concentration of 105 mg l-1 in the upstream of Sheyenne River before the outlets, we estimated that during the outlet operation period from April to November, pumping water from the west outlet alone would raise the sulfate concentration to 457 mg l-1, with the east outlet alone to 585 mg l-1, and with both to 536 mg l-1. For comparison the EPA standard of sulfate concentration is < 250 mg l -1 for drinking water.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. 2015. Modeling water quantity and quality in Devils Lake watershed using SWAT Model. SWAT conference, Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, 14-16 October.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang, X., and El, M. 2016. Modeling water quantity and quality in Devils Lake Watershed Using SWAT. North Dakota Water Quality Conference, Bismarck. 2-4 March.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X., Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water quantity and quality in Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. South Dakota Water Quality conference, South Dakota State University, Brooking. 27 October
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X., Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water Quantity and Sulfate Concentration in Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. American Geophysical Union conference, San Francisco, California, 12-16 December.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Lin, Z., and H. Zheng (2015). Impacts of biofuel-induced agricultural land use changes on watershed hydrology and water quality. AGU Fall Meeting, Abstract H53N-07. December 14-18, 2015, San Francisco, CA (Invited).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Lin, Z., and H. Zheng (2016). Hydrologic and water-quality impacts of agricultural land use changes incurred from bioenergy policies. North Dakota Water Quality Monitoring Conference, March 2-4, 2016, Bismarck, ND.
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Mengqi Xiong (2016). Land Use and Climate Impact on Sediment and Nutrient Loads into Lake Ashtabula, North Dakota, USA. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND.


Progress 09/01/14 to 08/31/15

Outputs
Target Audience: Nothing Reported Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project partially supported a Ph.D. student (Mohammad Anar) majoring in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering to collect meteorological, streamflow and water quality data to develop a Soil and Water Assessment Tool model for the Republican River Basin of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado. Mr. Afshin Shabani has been supported by the project to conduct the research on impacts of land use and climate change on water quality in the Devils Lake watershed. He is a Ph.D student and has been working on the project for three years. To support his research, we have sent him to two workshops to learn the SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2 models. We also encourage him to report his research progress in the conferences that are relevant. For example, he had poster presentation in 2015 AGU meeting and an oral presentation in 2016 AGU meeting. He also attended regional water quality related meetings in North Dakota and South Dakota. Mr. Brent Silvis, a master student enrolled in the UND Earth System Science and Policy program, has been supported by the grant since 2014 fall and graduated in summer of 2015. During the period, he received theNorth Dakota Water Resources Research Institute Fellowship and the cash prize for the best graduate student presentation at the GSA Section Meeting. He also received the invitation of theGeosciences Congressional Visits Day in Washington, DC in 2015 to discuss his research on agricultural land use and water quality in Red River Basin. The project partially supported an M.S. student Sharmin Sultana, majoring in Nature Resource Management to assess groundwater contamination risk associated with bioenergy related land use changes in North Dakota. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In developing the research, we have in constant communication with North Dakota Department of Health, USGS, and Devils Lake Water Resource Board, all of which are heavily involved in issues associated with water quantity and quality of Devils Lake. We have reported our results in severalmeetings, as reported in the "products" section. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? to study the impacts of bioenergy related land use changes on hydrological and water quality by coupling SWAT and economic land use models. to assess groundwater contamination risk associated with bioenergy related land use changes in North Dakota. to incorporate near-real time buoy measurements into our coupled model to further enhance its performance in simulating both water quantity and quality in the Devils Lake watershed. to explore possible outlet management scenarios and analyze their effects on flooding potential and sulfate concentrations in the Sheyenne River. To achieve this goal we have developed a coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2 model along with HECRAS model for Sheyenne River. to refine our remote sensing model of retrieving water temperature from the Landsat 8 satellite sensor. The temperature field retrieved from the satellite will be combined with CE-QUAL-W2 model to predict the possible outburst of harmful algal blooms in Devils Lake.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? 1) Economic model development An incentive based economic optimization model has been developed to approximate the decision-making process from a landowner perspective (e.g., perception of agricultural profitability). The spatially-explicit partial equilibrium model predicts the amount of land distributed for growing each major crop with specific management practices. The economic model optimizes at soil map unit level (10-30m resolution) and simulates crop equilibrium prices at the domestic market level. Different scenarios can be incorporated within the economic optimization framework to project land uses resulted from changes in policies and markets. 2) SWAT model development A Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model has been developed for the Red River of the North Basin. The subbasins were pre-defined by the 10-digit Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC-10) watershed boundary datasets. The study area was divided into 178 HUC-10 subbasins. National Hydrography Datasets, 5-meter LiDAR-based DEM, The SSURGO database, NASS Crop Data Layers, and daily observations of precipitation and temperature from 40 NOAA's Cooperative Observer Network's weather stations were used to develop the Red River Basin SWAT model. The fertilizer application rates for the crops grown in the region followed the North Dakota fertilizer recommendation. The SWAT model was then calibrated against crop yields, streamflows, suspended sediment concentrations, and nutrient (N and P) loads measured in the rivers during 2007-2012. 3) Coupled Economics-hydrology model In order to couple the two modeling modules, the SWAT model was first ran to obtain distributed crop yields for different management practices such as fertilization rates and residual collection. The synthetic crop yields were then used as input variables for the economic land use model, whose output is the land-use distribution probabilities. To represent changes in market demand and policy, we designed different scenarios to drive the economic land-use decision-makings; the land-use distribution probabilities from the economic model are then fed into the hydrological and water quality model to estimate the impacts on hydrology and downstream water quality (see figure 1). Figure 1: the coupled Economics-Hydrology model Five land-use scenarios are considered: (1) a pre-EISA scenario, which is based on USDA-NASS land-use data in 2006; (2) a post-EISA scenarios, which is based on USDA-NASS land-use data in 2013; (3) a modest corn expansion scenario, which assumes a 20% increase in national corn demand compared to the baseline; (4) a dramatic corn expansion scenario, which assumes a 60% increase in corn demand compared to the baseline; and (5) a grassland expansion scenario, which assumes an incentive of $40 per acre provided for converting cropland to grassland. 4) Real time water quality monitoring We continued to deploy the buoy to monitor in near real-time the water quality of Devils Lake. The buoy operated from May to November 2016, collecting data every 10 minutes. The temperature and salinity measured by the buoy were used to validate the coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2 model. 5) Incorporating remote sensing method We developed a remote sensing method to retrieve the surface water temperature from Landsat 8 sensor using the water vapor concentration estimated from the MODIS. 6) Studied regions: Red River of the North Basin (excluding Devils Lake). We used the calibrated SWAT model, which was developed based on the 2013 CDL land use map, to simulate the streamflows and water quality under the post-EISA land use scenario. We also developed a second SWAT model based on the 2006 CDL land use map to simulate the streamflows and water quality under the pre-EISA land use scenario. Both models were driven by the same set of meteorological recordings from 2000 to 2012 to discount the changes caused by climate conditions. We then compare the peak flows during the spring snowmelt time and the annual sediment and nutrient loads in the Red River to examine the hydrological and water quality changes from pre-EISA to post-EISA. While the sediment and nutrient loads were calculated directly from SWAT outputs, the impact on peak flows was evaluated using the normalized-hydrography analysis. In the normalized-hydrography analysis, hydrographs of the Red River at Fargo, ND, and Grand Forks, ND, two major cities along the river, were chosen by inspection according to the following criteria: (1) resulting from a snowmelt-runoff event; (2) including only on main peak; (3) peak discharge greater than 100 m3/s at Fargo and 700 m3/s at Grand Forks; (4) complete daily record for a 31-day period; and (5) no other complications in the hydrograph. Devils Lake. To better understand how the water quality of the lake, particularly its sulfate concentration, changes with a rising water level, we simulate both water quantity and quality of the Devils Lake. We further analyzed impact of artificial pumping on the water quality of the Sheyenne River. The SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2 models were selected for this simulation because of their proven capacity in simulating hydrology (SWAT) and water quality (CE-QUAL-W2) in tributaries and lakes. To the best of our knowledge, the spatial distribution and temporal changes of the sulfate concentration in Devils Lake have never been simulated before. The results of this study will aid in water management and decision making to mitigate Devils Lake flooding and the impact on downstream rivers. While previous studies have generally attributed the changes in the hydrology of Devils Lake to the current wet spell, the impacts of land-use changes have not been investigated. In a separate study, we studied the hydrology of Devils Lake by developing four land-use alternatives driven by market and policy conditions. Using a calibrated SWAT model, we studied the impacts of land-use changes on DL hydrology and overspill probability under historic and changed climates. Republican River Basin. We developed a SWAT model for the Republican River Basin. The subbasins were pre-defined by the 10-digit Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC-10) watershed boundary datasets. The study area was divided into 102 HUC-10 subbasins. National Hydrography Datasets, 10-meter DEM, The SSURGO database, NASS Crop Data Layers, and daily observations of precipitation and temperature from 33 NOAA's Cooperative Observer Network's weather stations were used to develop the Republican River Basin SWAT model.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2017 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water Quantity and Sulfate Concentrations in the Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. Journal of American Water Resources Association. Accepted for publication.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Kharel, G; H.Zheng; A. Kirilenko (2016) Can land-use change mitigate long-term flood risks in the Prairie Pothole Region? The case of Devils Lake, North Dakota, USA Regional Environmental Change, DOI: 10.1007/s10113-016-0970-y
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Lin, Z., M.J. Anar, H. Zheng (2015). Hydrologic and water-quality impacts of agricultural land use changes incurred from bioenergy policies. Journal of Hydrology 525:429-440.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Kirilenko, A., Kharel*, G. , Zheng, H., Gulbin*, S. (2016). Effects of climate and land use change on the long-term flooding in the Devils Lake, North Dakota watershed. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, March, San Francisco, CA.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X., Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water Quantity and Sulfate Concentration in Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference, San Francisco.
  • Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2013 Citation: Euliss, N.H; Jr., M.M. Brinson; D.M. Mushet; L.M. Smith; W.H. Conner; V.R. Burkett; D.A. Wilcox; M.W. Hester; H. Zheng. (2013) "Ecosystem Services: Developing Sustainable Management Paradigms Based on Wetland Functions and Processes", Book Chapter.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X., Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water Quantity and Quality in Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. South Dakota Water Quality conference, South Dakota State University, Brooking.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Lin, Z., and H. Zheng (2016). Hydrologic and water-quality impacts of agricultural land use changes incurred from bioenergy policies. North Dakota Water Quality Monitoring Conference, March 2-4, 2016, Bismarck, ND.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. (2016). Modeling Water Quantity and Quality in the Devils Lake Watershed Using SWAT Model. North Dakota Water Quality Conference, March 2-4, 2016, Bismarck.


Progress 09/01/13 to 08/31/14

Outputs
Target Audience:09/01/2013-08/31/2014: Acadmia in general Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?2013-2014: The project also partially supported an M.S. student (Mengqi Xiong, Female) majoring in Civil and Environmental Engineering to develop a watershed-scale hydrological and water quality model for the Lake Ashtabula watershed. The project also partially supported a Ph.D. student (Mohammad Anar) majoring in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering to collect meteorological, streamflow and water quality data to develop a Soil and Water Assessment Tool model for the Red River of the North Basin. 2014-2015: The project partially supported a Ph.D. student (Mohammad Anar) majoring in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering to collect meteorological, streamflow and water quality data to develop a Soil and Water Assessment Tool model for the Republican River Basin of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado. The project supported a M.S (Brent Silvis) and a Ph.D. student (Afshin Shabani) majoring in Earth System Science and Policy to conduct both empirical research and modeling work to pursue their degree programs. 2015-2016: The project continues support for Ph.D student (Afshin Shabani) majoring in Earth System Science and Policy to conduct modeling works in intergrating SWAT model and Remote sensing to predict water quality. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?1. To study the impacts of bioenergy related land use changes on hydrological and water quality by coupling SWAT and economic land use models. 2. To assess groundwater contamination risk associated with bioenergy related land use changes in North Dakota.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? 2014-2015: Red River of the North Basin: We used the calibrated SWAT model, which was developed based on the 2013 CDL land use map, to simulate the streamflows and water quality under the post-EISA land use scenario. We also developed a second SWAT model based on the 2006 CDL land use map to simulate the streamflows and water quality under the pre-EISA land use scenario. Both models were driven by the same set of meteorological recordings from 2000 to 2012 to discount the changes caused by climate conditions. We then compare the peak flows during the spring snowmelt time and the annual sediment and nutrient loads in the Red River to examine the hydrological and water quality changes from pre-EISA to post-EISA. While the sediment and nutrient loads were calculated directly from SWAT outputs, the impact on peak flows was evaluated using the normalized-hydrography analysis. In the normalized-hydrography analysis, hydrographs of the Red River at Fargo, ND, and Grand Forks, ND, two major cities along the river, were chosen by inspection according to the following criteria: (1) resulting from a snowmelt-runoff event; (2) including only on main peak; (3) peak discharge greater than 100 m3/s at Fargo and 700 m3/s at Grand Forks; (4) complete daily record for a 31-day period; and (5) no other complications in the hydrograph. Republican River Basin: We developed a SWAT model for the Republican River Basin. The subbasins were pre-defined by the 10-digit Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC-10) watershed boundary datasets. The study area was divided into 102 HUC-10 subbasins. National Hydrography Datasets, 10-meter DEM, The SSURGO database, NASS Crop Data Layers, and daily observations of precipitation and temperature from 33 NOAA's Cooperative Observer Network's weather stations were used to develop the Republican River Basin SWAT model. Devils lake, ND: The simulated daily stream flows were compared with the observations for the 6 sub-watersheds with gauging stations. Overall, the developed SWAT model is able to simulate the stream flow well with ENS > 0.5 and PBIAS < 25%. Comparison the simulated water level of Devils Lake with the observed water level showed that the model is able to capture the dynamic of the lake level changes very well, with an accuracy of 0.35 m (as measured by the root mean square error). Our simulation showed that without the operation of the outlets, the water level would have been 0.70 m higher at the end of simulation period. The simulated daily TSS concentration were compared with the observed value for the two tributaries (E.C.Edmore and Starkweahter) that have TSS measurements. Overall performance of the model in simulating TSS loads for the E.C.Edmore and Starkweahter tributaries is good with R2 > 0.5 and PBIAS < 10%. The simulated daily TSS concentration in the two tributaries varied from negligible (< 1 mg l-1) mainly during the winter to ~ 43 mg l -1 during spring. Since only two tributaries (M.C. Cando and E.C. Edmore) have measurements of TP and TN, we compare the simulation result for these two sub-watersheds. Simulated daily load ranged from~ 0.0 to 2,000 kg day -1 for TP and ~ 0.0 to 10,000 kg day -1 for TN. The model performed particularly well for E.C. Edmore with R2 > 0.66 and ENS > 0.62 for both TP and TN. 2015-2016: Red River of the North Basin: In order to couple the SWAT and economic land use models, we first run the SWAT model to obtain distributed crop yields for different management practices such as fertilization rates. The synthetic crop yields will be used as input variables for the economic land use model, whose output will be the land-use distribution probabilities. For scenario analysis, we first design different market demand and conservation policy scenarios to drive our economic model; the land-use distribution probabilities from the economic model are then fed into the hydrological and water quality model to estimate the impacts on hydrology and downstream water quality. We designed five land-use scenarios. (1) The NASS 2006 scenario is based on USDA-NASS land-use data in 2006, which is considered as a pre-EISA scenario; (2) the NASS 2013 scenario is based on USDA-NASS land-use data in 2013, which is considered as a post-EISA scenario; (3) the Corn Demand (+20%) scenario assumes the national corn demand increases 20% above the baseline scenario; (4) the Corn Demand (+60%) assumes the national corn demand increases 60% above the baseline scenario; and (5) the Grassland (+$40/ac) assumes an incentive of $40 per acre for grasslands. Devils Lake, ND: After simulating stream flow and water quality at Devils Lake watershed using SWAT model, we developed a hydrodynamic and water quality model (CE-QUAL-W2) to simulate temperature, sulfate concentration, and water quality constituents in Devils Lake. Both hydrodynamic and water quality simulation in CE-QUAL2-W2 depend on accurate representation of bathymetry. We developed a toolbox in Arc-GIS to divide the lake into grids that consist of 96 longitudinal segments (1 km wide for each segment) and a maximum of 17 vertical layers (1.5 meter deep for each layer). Hourly meteorological data of temperature, dew point, wind speeds and directions, cloud cover and precipitation were downloaded from the Devils Lake weather station. SWAT-simulated flow, TSS, and total phosphorus (TP) and nitrogen (TN) were provided to CE-QUAL-W2 as input. Water temperature for inflow tributaries was estimated following Neitsch et al. (2011). CE-QUAL-W2 has ability to consider different type of artificial outflow such as pump, withdraw, spillway, etc. Two emergency outlets in Devils Lake were considered as withdraw in our model. Our simulated water temperature profiles with CE-QUAL-W2 model were consistent with the field measurements which have been conducted seasonally. The lake temperature changes significantly, from ~ 2-3 °C during the winter to ~ 22-23 °C during the late summer and early fall. The simulated water temperature profiles indicate that water is well mixed for spring, summer and fall seasons, consistent with the observation. Time series of simulated temperature was compared with observed values (buoy's measurement). The result of time series comparison was good, with R2 > 0.97 and an absolute errors < 0.85 °C. A comparison was made between observed and simulated sulfate concentrations at different locations in Devils Lake from 2008 to 2014, which indicates that the model performed well in simulating sulfate (R2 > 0.85). Our simulation showed a general increase of sulfate concentration from west to east of Devils Lake, which at the east end (~ 1700 mg l-1) is ~3 times greater than at the west side (~600 mg l-1). This west-east gradient is caused by overall high concentration of sulfate in the eastern part and stronger dilution in the western side of the lake by relatively fresher water flowing in through Big Coulee and Channel A tributaries. The operation of the outlets, while releasing the pressure of rising water in Devils Lake, has led to significant degradation of water quality for Sheyenne River. Since the average sulfate concentration near the east outlet (~1000 mg l-1) is much higher than the west outlet (~600 mg l-1) and the rate of discharge from the east outlet is also higher, pumping water from east outlet cause more serious degradation of the water quality in Sheyenne River. With an average sulfate concentration of 105 mg l-1 in the upstream of Sheyenne River before the outlets, we estimated that during the outlet operation period from April to November, pumping water from the west outlet alone would raise the sulfate concentration to 457 mg l-1, with the east outlet alone to 585 mg l-1, and with both to 536 mg l-1. For comparison the EPA standard of sulfate concentration is < 250 mg l -1 for drinking water.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: Lin, Z., M. Xiong, and G. Padmanabhan (2014). Developing nutrient TMDLs for Lake Ashtabula (North Dakota) under climate and land use changes. 2014 World Environmental and Water Resources Congress, June 1-5, 2014, Portland, OR.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Lin, Z., M.J. Anar, H. Zheng (2015). Hydrologic and water-quality impacts of agricultural land use changes incurred from bioenergy policies. Journal of Hydrology 525:429-440.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2014 Citation: " Lin, Z. (2014). Evaluating the impacts of growing bioenergy crops on water supply and quality in the Red River of the North basin. 2014 American Water Resources Association Annual Conference, November 2-6, 2014, Tysons Corner, VA.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2015 Citation: " Lin, Z. (2015). Agricultural land-use changes incurred from bioenergy policies and their impacts on hydrology and water quality in the Red River Basin. 2015 ASABE North Central Intersectional Conference, April 10-11, 2015, Fargo, ND.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2015 Citation: " Lin, Z., and H. Zheng (2015). Impacts of biofuel-induced agricultural land use changes on watershed hydrology and water quality. AGU Fall Meeting, Abstract H53N-07. December 14-18, 2015, San Francisco, CA (Invited).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2016 Citation: " Lin, Z., and H. Zheng (2016). Hydrologic and water-quality impacts of agricultural land use changes incurred from bioenergy policies. North Dakota Water Quality Monitoring Conference, March 2-4, 2016, Bismarck, ND.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2015 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. 2015. Modeling Water Quantity and Quality in the Devils Lake Watershed Using SWAT Model. SWAT Conference, Purdue University, Laffayette
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Under Review Year Published: 2016 Citation: 2. Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water Quantity and Sulfate Concentration in the Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. Journal of American Water Resources Assessment
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2016 Citation: 3. Shabani, A., Zhang, X. and Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water Quantity and Quality in the Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. Water Quality Conference, South Dakota University, Brookings
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2016 Citation: Shabani, A., Zhang X., Ell, M. 2016. Modeling Water Quantity and Sulfate Concentration in Devils Lake Watershed Using Coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. American Geophysical Union conference, San Francisco
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Other Year Published: 2016 Citation: Silvis, B. 2016 An assessment of the influence of economic drivers of land use change on nitrate concentrations in the red river of the north basin (M.S. thesis)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Kharel, G; H.Zheng; A. Kirilenko (2016) Can land-use change mitigate long-term flood risks in the Prairie Pothole Region? The case of Devils Lake, North Dakota, USA Regional Environmental Change, DOI: 10.1007/s10113-016-0970-y