Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Parajuli, Prem B.

Committee Member

Sassenrath, Gretchen F.

Committee Member

Brooks, John P.

Committee Member

Cathcart, Thomas, P.

Date of Degree

5-11-2013

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Biological Engineering

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

James Worth Bagley College of Engineering

Department

Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering

Abstract

This study was conducted on two Mississippi watersheds. The SWAT model was applied to the Upper Pearl River Watershed (UPRW) to evaluate flow, sediment, nutrients, and fecal coliform bacteria (FCB) transport. The model was further applied to evaluate crop and sediment yields from three tillage systems (Conventional, Reduce 1, and Reduce 2) of the Big Sunflower River Watershed (BSRW). In the UPRW, flow and sediment simulations showed good to very good model performances (for flow R2 up to 0.76 and NSE up to 0.75; and for sediment R2 up to 0.72 and NSE up to 0.54). Both total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorous (TP) simulations showed fair to good model performances (R2 up to 0.71 and NSE up to 0.63 for TN; R2 up to 0.70 and NSE up to 0.59 for TP). The FCB simulation showed good model performance (R2 up to 0.59 and NSE up to 0.58). In the BSRW, crop simulations showed good to very good model performances (for corn yield R2 up to 0.5 and NSE up to 0.9; and for soybean yield R2 and NSE up to 0.6). Furthermore, modeling outputs of the BSRW explained 64% of the water table fluctuations in the Mississippi alluvial aquifer. The future climates of the UPRW and the BSRW were evaluated for three emission scenarios (A1B, A2, and B1) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the help of the general circulation model, CCSM3. Simulations predict future sediment yields will increase as much as 25% in the UPRW. Both TN and TP yields will also be elevated as much as 7.3% and 14.3% respectively in future climates of the UPRW. Four best management practices (BMPs) were applied to the current and future climates in the UPRW and results showed that BMPs were able to reduce 51% of flow, 55% of sediment, 44% of TN, and 88% of TP in the baseline climate. Moreover, the effectiveness of TN removal will increase in future climates, while the effectiveness of TP removal will remain unchanged. The effects of climate variability on corn and soybean yield were insignificant in the BSRW.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/17754

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