Using MODIS Land-Use/Land-Cover Data and Hydrological Modeling for Estimating Nutrient Concentrations - Vladimir J. Alarcon, William McAnally, Gary Ervin, Christopher Brooks

Using MODIS Land-Use/Land- Cover Data and Hydrological Modeling for Estimating Nutrient Concentrations Vladimir J. Alarcon, William McAnally, Gary Ervin, Christopher Brooks Northern Gulf Institute - GeoSystems Research Institute Mississippi State University

Introduction • United States land area: 0.9 billion hectares – 20 percent is cropland, 26 percent permanent grassland pasture and range land, and 28 percent forest-use land. – Land used for agricultural purposes in 1997 totaled nearly 1.2 billion acres, over (52 percent of total U.S. land area). – Land use in the Southeastern United States is predominantly covered by forests and agricultural lands. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Introduction • Water quality and flow regime influence the ecological “health” of aquatic biota. • In the Southeastern USA – agricultural land use can comprise 50% or more of land cover, – sediment and nutrient runoff can seriously degrade the ecological quality of aquatic environments. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Objectives • Connecting hydrological processes to biological system response studies in the Upper Tombigbee watershed – a hydrological model of the watershed was developed. – model development and its use for providing stream flow, runoff, and nutrient concentrations to establish relationships between stream nutrients, runoff and discharge, and biotic data. –. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Methods • Study area: – Upper Tombigbee • located in Northwestern Alabama and Northeastern Mississippi, USA • Drains approximately 1390325 ha • main contributor of flow to the Mobile River • approximate average stream flow of 169 m3/s. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Methods • Topographical data: – USGS DEM, • 3 arc-second (1:250,000- scale, 300 m) • A seamless topographical – “mosaicking” several DEMs that covered the area. • ArcInfo (GRID) was used to fill grid cells with no- data values (con, focalmax, and focalmean) ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Methods • Land Use data: – Two land use datasets • USGS GIRAS (1986) • NASA MODIS MOD12Q1 (2001-2004) – The MODIS MOD12 Q1 data was geo-processed for the dataset to be consistent with the USGS GIRAS dataset (land use categories). ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Methods/Results • Biological Data and Watershed Delineation: – Geo-locations of field-collected data on fish and mussel were used to delineate the watershed under study. • Produced sub-watersheds contained at least four sampled species per sub-watershed • Only samples collected during 2002-2004 and 1977- 1982 were used for these analyses, to coincide with the GIRAS (1986) and MODIS (2001-2004) land use data. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Methods • Hydrological Modeling – Hydrological Simulation Program Fortran (HSPF). • Simulation of non-point source watershed hydrology and water quality. • Time-series of meteorological/water-quality data, land use and topographical data are used to estimate stream flow hydrographs and polluto-graphs. • The model simulates interception, soil moisture, surface runoff, interflow, base flow, snowpack depth and water content, snowmelt, evapo-transpiration, and ground-water recharge. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Methods • Hydrological Modeling – Nutrients (total nitrogen, TN, and total phosphorus, TP) concentrations were estimated using export coefficient for the region (*). Land use category Average TP (kg/ha- Average TN (kg/ha- year) year) Row Crops 4.46 16.09 Non Row Crops 1.08 5.19 Forested 0.236 2.86 Urban 1.91 9.97 Pasture 1.5 8.65 Feedlot/Manure Storage 300.7 3110.7 Mixed Agriculture 1.134 16.53 • (*) Lin, J.P.: Review of Published Export Coefficient and Event Mean Concentration (EMC) Data. Wetlands Regulatory Assistance Program ERDC TN-WRAP-04-3, September (2004) ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Results • Land Use: – From 1986 to 2003 agricultural lands increased in almost 34%, forest lands decreased in 16%. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Results • Hydro modeling: – Once an optimum watershed delineation was achieved, HSPF was launched from within BASINS to initialize the HSPF model application for the Upper Tombigbee watershed. The initialization was done for each of the land use datasets used in this study (GIRAS and MODIS). Hence, two hydrological models were set-up with two different time periods of simulation: 1980-1990, and 1996- 2006. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Results • Hydro modeling: – From delineated watershed to HSPF model ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Results • Hydro modeling: Calibrated HSPF models ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Results • Nutrient estimation Total Phosphorus Average Maximum 3 quartile (selected sub-basins) Sub-basin 43 GIRAS 0.43 GIRAS 2.04 GIRAS 0.62 51 1.11 5.26 1.66 54 0.80 3.75 1.12 Average Maximum 3 quartile Sub-basin MODIS MODIS MODIS 43 0.33 2.17 0.51 51 0.88 6.09 1.17 54 0.68 4.36 1.06 Total Nitrogen Average Maximum 3 quartile Sub-basin GIRAS GIRAS GIRAS 43 2.30 10.91 3.32 51 4.40 20.94 6.61 54 3.53 16.65 5.00 Average Maximum 3 quartile Sub-basin MODIS MODIS MODIS 43 1.76 11.42 2.69 51 3.42 23.70 4.55 54 2.98 19.07 4.62 ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Results • Nutrient estimation (all sub-basins) TOTAL PHOSPHORUS % Change (Mg/L) Average Maximum (Maximum) GIRAS 1.23 5.66 MODIS 1.20 7.78 37 TOTAL NITROGEN % Change (Mg/L) Average Maximum Maximum GIRAS 4.72 21.58 MODIS 4.48 28.94 34 ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Conclusions • Methodology for the introduction of land use data from MODIS MOD 12Q1 into the Hydrological Program Fortran (HSPF) is shown to be successful. • MODIS datasets for 2001 through 2004 were geo- processed and the results are shown to be consistent with historical trends in land use for the region of Upper Tombigbee watershed. – From 1986 to 2003 agricultural lands increased in almost 34%, forest lands decreased in 16%, and range-land almost quadruple in size. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Conclusions • The watershed delineation process, guided by geographical locations of sampling points of mollusk and fish data, allowed the generation of sub-watersheds that captured the distribution of biological data throughout the study area. • A comparison of nutrient concentration values for sub- basins 43, 51, and 54 showed: – Average and 3rd-quartile total phosphorus (TP) concentrations do not differ greatly when using either land use dataset. – Only maximum concentrations showed to have increased from 6% to 16%. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Conclusions • Similarly, – Maximum total nitrogen (TN) concentrations were found to have increased when using MODIS land use data (with respect to TN concentrations estimated using GIRAS land use data). Percent increments in TN concentration values are in- between 5% to 15%. • For all sub-basins: – Maximum TP and TN concentrations seem to have increased in about 37 % and 34%, respectively, from 1986 to 2003. – This increase in maximum nutrient concentrations seems to correlate with the 34% increase in agricultural areas in the Upper Tombigbee watershed, from 1986 to 2003. ICCSA 2010 Conference, March 23-26, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan

Using MODIS Land-Use/Land-Cover Data and Hydrological Modeling for Estimating Nutrient Concentrations - Vladimir J. Alarcon, William McAnally, Gary Ervin, Christopher Brooks

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