Integrated Agricultural and Hydrological Modeling within an Intensive Livestock Region

authored by

Peter Kreins, Horst Gömann, Sylvia Herrmann, Ralf Kunkel, Frank Wendland

Abstract

An interdisciplinary model network consisting of the regional agricultural economic model RAUMIS and the hydro(geo)logical models GROWA/WEKU is used to analyze the effect of different scenarios of maximum agricultural nitrogen balance surplus on water quality. The study area is the federal state of Lower Saxony, Germany, which features heterogeneous natural site conditions as well as agricultural production structures. A focus of the study is the modeling of supra-regional manure transports that, according to the model's results, considerably increase due to a lowering of maximum nitrogen balance surpluses. The assessment of the examined nitrogen reduction measures reveals that adequate indicators have to be applied. In this regard, the model results show that even though the analyzed measure leads to a substantial overall reduction of agricultural nitrogen surpluses, nitrogen discharges into surface and groundwater can regionally increase.

External Organisation(s)

Federal Agricultural Research Centre
University of Hohenheim
Forschungszentrum Jülich

Type

Contribution to book/anthology

Pages

113-142

No. of pages

30

Publication date

18.07.2007

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Environmental Science (miscellaneous), Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 2 - Zero Hunger

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1569-3740(07)07006-X (Access: Closed)