Román Valentín, Gabriel

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Modeling the land-use legacy effect of agricultural practices on the water quality of streams from forest watersheds of Puerto Rico
(2018-05) Román Valentín, Gabriel; Pérez Alegría, Luis R.; College of Engineering; Hwang, Sangchul; Segarra, Rafael; Pagán Trinidad, Ismael; Department of Civil Engineering; Román Velazquez, Felix R.
In order to aid in the establishment of “reference” criteria the nutrient status and dynamics of soils, water and stream sediments of a secondary forested watershed is being compared with the dynamics of an “historically” forested watershed in Puerto Rico. Additionally an empirical framework was developed for both watersheds using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to account for the land use legacy effect on the present nutrient status of the waters. Results show that the hydrogeology of these watersheds is partially responsible for the discrepancies shown above. Calibrated model simulations show that agricultural succession tropical forests can have twice the annual phosphorous discharge of primary forests in the tropical island of Puerto Rico. Also a version of SWAT 2009 developed for the tropics by M. Strauch, M. Volk, (2013) resulted in a difference of up to 35.6% of annual dissolved phosphorous loads in simulation results.