Effects of riparian buffers on nitrate concentrations in watershed discharges: New models and management implications

Ecological Applications

Volumn 21, Issue 5, 2011, Pages 1679-1695

  Weller, Donald E ^a   Baker, Matthew E ^a,b   Jordan, Thomas E ^a  

^a SMITHSONIAN ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH CENTER   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE COUNTY   (United States)

Author keywords

Chesapeake Bay watershed; Collinearity; Flow path analysis; Land cover; Nitrate; Nitrogen; Nutrient discharges; Riparian buffer; Watershed analysis; Watershed management

Indexed keywords

NITRATE;

AGGREGATE; AGRICULTURAL LAND; BASIN MANAGEMENT; LAND COVER; NITRATE; PIEDMONT; RESTORATION ECOLOGY; RIPARIAN FOREST; WATERSHED;

ARTICLE; CHEMISTRY; ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING; RIVER; STATISTICAL MODEL; THEORETICAL MODEL; WATER POLLUTANT; WATER POLLUTION;

ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING; MODELS, STATISTICAL; MODELS, THEORETICAL; NITRATES; RIVERS; WATER POLLUTANTS, CHEMICAL; WATER POLLUTION, CHEMICAL;

APPALACHIANS; CHESAPEAKE BAY; ISRAEL; ISRAELI COASTAL PLAIN; ITALY; PIEDMONT BASIN; UNITED STATES;

EID: 79960346708     PISSN: 10510761     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1890/10-0789.1     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. Alexander, R. B R. A. Smith, and G. E. Schwarz. 2000. Effect of stream channel size on the delivery of nitrogen to the Gulf of Mexico. Nature 403:758-761. (Pubitemid 30111834)
2. Altman, S. J., and R. R. Parizek. 1995. Dilution of nonpointsource nitrate in groundwater. Journal of Environmental Quality 24:707-718.
3. Bachman, L J. B. Lindsey, J. W. Brakebill, and D. S. Powars. 1998. Ground-water discharge and base-flow nitrate loads of nontidal streams, and their relation to a hydrogeomorphic classification of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, middle Atlantic coast. Water-Resources Investigations Report 98-4059. U. S. Geological Survey, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
4. Baker, M. E D. E. Weller, and T. E. Jordan. 2006a. Improved methods for quantifying potential nutrient interception by riparian buffers. Landscape Ecology 21:1327-1345. (Pubitemid 44496945)
5. Baker, M. E D. E. Weller, and T. E. Jordan. 2006b. Comparison of automated watershed delineations: effects on land cover areas, percentages, and relationships to nutrient discharge. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 72:159-168. (Pubitemid 43269932)
6. Baker, M. E D. E. Weller, and T. E. Jordan. 2007. Effects of stream map resolution on measures of riparian buffer distribution and nutrient retention potential. Landscape Ecology 22:973-992. (Pubitemid 47125008)
7. Baker, M. E M. J. Wiley, and P. W. Seelbach. 2001. GIS-based hydrologic modeling of riparian areas: implications for stream water quality. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 37:1615-1628. (Pubitemid 34108532)
8. Baker, M. E M. J. Wiley, P. W. Seelbach, and M. L. Carlson. 2003. A GIS-based index of groundwater potential for aquatic resource inventory, assessment, and environmental management. Environmental Management 32:706-719. (Pubitemid 38372797)
9. Bevington, P. R. 1969. Data reduction and error analysis for the physical sciences. McGraw-Hill, New York, New York, USA.
10. Boesch, D. F R. B. Brinsfield, and R. E. Magnien. 2001. Chesapeake Bay eutrophication: scientific understanding, ecosystem restoration, and challenges for agriculture. Journal of Environmental Quality 30:303-320. (Pubitemid 32424050)
11. Bohlke, J. K., and J. M. Denver. 1995. Combined use of groundwater dating, chemical, and isotopic analyses to resolve the history and fate of nitrate contamination in two agricultural watersheds, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Maryland. Water Resources Research 31:2319-2339. (Pubitemid 26458778)
12. Burnham, K. P., and D. R. Anderson. 2002. Models selection and multimodel inference: a practical information-theoretic approach. Springer, New York, New York, USA.
13. Carpenter, S. R N. F. Caraco, D. L. Correll, R. W. Howarth, A. N. Sharpley, and V. H. Smith. 1998. Nonpoint pollution of surface waters with phosphorous and nitrogen. Ecological Applications 8:559-568. (Pubitemid 28381987)
14. Claggett, P. R J. A. Okay, and S. V. Stehman. 2010. Monitoring regional riparian forest cover change using stratified sampling and multiresolution imagery. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 46:334-343.
15. Cooper, A. B. 1990. Nitrate depletion in the riparian zone and stream channel of a small headwater catchment. Hydrobiologia 202:13-26.
16. Correll, D. L T. E. Jordan, and D. E. Weller. 1997. Failure of agricultural riparian buffers to protect surface waters from groundwater nitrate contamination. Pages 162-165 in J. Gibert, J. Mathieu, and F. Fournier, editors. Groundwater/surface water ecotones: biological and hydrological interactions and management options. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
17. Craig, L. S., et al. 2008. Stream restoration strategies for reducing river nitrogen loads. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6:529-538.
18. Day, R. L., and R. C. Crew. 2005. Chesapeake Bay riparian forest and wetland buffer inventory: final report. The Geospatial Technology Program at the Land Analysis Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA.
19. Denver, J. M. 1991. Groundwater-sampling network to study agrochemical effects on water quality in the unconfined aquifer. Pages 139-149 in R. G. Nash and A. R. Leslie, editors. ACS Symposium Series 65, Groundwater residue sampling design. American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C., USA.
20. Diebel, M J. Maxted, D. Robertson, S. Han, and M. Vander Zanden. 2009. Landscape planning for agricultural nonpoint source pollution reduction III: assessing phosphorus and sediment reduction rotential. Environmental Management 43:69-83.
21. Dosskey, M. G 2001. Toward quantifying water pollution abatement in response to installing buffers on crop land. Environmental Management 28:577-598. (Pubitemid 32954898)
22. Dosskey, M. G, D. E. Eisenhauer, and M. J. Helmers. 2005. Establishing conservation buffers using precision information. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 60:349-354. (Pubitemid 47413212)
23. Dosskey, M. G, M. J. Helmers, D. E. Eisenhauer, T. G Franti, and K. D. Hoagland. 2002. Assessment of concentrated flow through riparian buffers. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 57:336-343. (Pubitemid 36080571)
24. Dosskey, M. G, P. Vidon, N. P. Gurwick, C. J. Allan, T. P. Duval, and R. Lowrance. 2010. The role of riparian vegetation in protecting and improving chemical water quality in streams. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 46:261-277.
25. Federal Leadership Committee for the Chesapeake Bay. 2010. Strategy for protecting and restoring the Chesapeake Bay watershed: Executive Order 13508. (http://executiveorder.chesapeakebay.net/file.axd?file= 2010%2f5%2fChesapeake+EO+Strategy%20.pdf)
26. Freund, R. J., and P. D. Minton. 1979. Regression methods. Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, New York, USA.
27. Gergel, S. E. 2005. Spatial and non-spatial factors: when do they impact the utility of landscape indicators of water quality? Landscape Ecology 20:177-189. (Pubitemid 40924498)
28. Gergel, S. E Y. Stange, N. C. Coops, C. Bater, K. Johansen, and K. R. Kirby. 2007. What is the value of a good map? An example using high spatial resolution imagery to aid riparian restoration. Ecosystems 10:688-702. (Pubitemid 47547283)
29. Gerla, P. J. 1999. Estimating the ground-water contribution in wetlands using modeling and digital terrain analysis. Wetlands 19:394-402. (Pubitemid 29496891)
30. Gesch, D M. Oimoen, S. Greenlee, C. Nelson, M. Steuck, and D. Tyler. 2002. The national elevation dataset. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 68:5-11. (Pubitemid 34096270)
31. Gift, D. M P. M. Groffman, S. S. Kaushal, and P. M. Mayer. 2008. Denitrification potential, root biomass, and organic matter in degraded and restored urban riparian zones. Restoration Ecology 18:113-120.
32. Goetz, S. J. 2006. Remote sensing of riparian buffers: past progress and future prospects. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 42:133-143. (Pubitemid 43346347)
33. Gold, A. J P. M. Groffman, K. Addy, D. Q. Kellogg, M. Stolt, and A. E. Rosenblatt. 2001. Landscape attributes as controls on groundwater nitrate removal capacity of riparian zones. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 37:1457-1464. (Pubitemid 34108520)
34. Gregory, S A. Allen, M. Baker, K. Boyer, T. Dillaha, and J. Elliott. 2007. Realistic expectations of timing between conservation and restoration actions and ecological responses. Pages 115-146 in M. Schnepf and C. Cox, editors. Managing agricultural landscapes for environmental quality. Soil and Water Conservation Society, Ankeny, Iowa, USA.
35. Hagy, J. D W. R. Boynton, C. W. Keefe, and K. V. Wood. 2004. Hypoxia in Chesapeake Bay, 1950-2001: long-term change in relation to nutrient loading and river flow. Estuaries and Coasts 27:634-658. (Pubitemid 39138803)
36. Hassett, B M. A. Palmer, E. S. Bernhardt, S. Smith, J. Carr, and D. D. Hart. 2005. Restoring watersheds project by project: trends in Chesapeake Bay tributary restoration. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3:259-267. (Pubitemid 40764604)
37. Hefting, M. M J. C. Clement, D. Dowrick, A. C. Cosandey, S. Bernal, C. Cimpian, A. Tatur, T. P. Burt, and G. Pinay. 2004. Water table elevation controls on soil nitrogen cycling in riparian wetlands along a European climatic gradient. Biogeochemistry 67:113-134. (Pubitemid 38319147)
38. Hill, A. R. 1996. Nitrate removal in stream riparian zones. Journal of Environmental Quality 25:743-755. (Pubitemid 26250017)
39. Hollenhorst, T. H G. E. Host, and L. B. Johnson. 2006. Scaling issues in mapping riparian zones with remote sensing data: quantifying errors and sources of uncertainty. Pages 275-295 in J. Wu, K. B. Jones, H. Li, and O. L. Loucks, editors. Scaling and uncertainty analysis in ecology: methods and applications. Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
40. Jacobs, T. C., and J. W. Gilliam. 1985. Riparian loses of nitrate from agricultural drainage waters. Journal of Environmental Quality 14:472-478.
41. Jenesco, K. G B. L. McGlynn, M. N. Gooseff, S. M. Wondzell, K. E. Bencala, and L. A. Marshall. 2009. Hydrologic connectivity between landscapes and streams: transferring reach-and plot-scale understanding to the catchment scale. Water Resources Research 45:W04428. [doi:10.1029/2008WR007225]
42. Johnson, L. B C. Richards, G. E. Host, and J. W. Arthur. 1997. Landscape influences on water chemistry in Midwestern stream ecosystems. Freshwater Biology 37:193-208.
43. Jones, K. B A. C. Neale, M. S. Nash, R. D. Van Remortel, J. D. Wickham, K. H. Riiters, and R. V. O'Neill. 2001. Predicting nutrient discharges and sediment loadings to streams from landscape metrics: a multiple watershed study from the United States Mid-Atlantic Region. Landscape Ecology 16:301-312. (Pubitemid 32665075)
44. Jordan, T. E D. L. Correll, and D. E. Weller. 1993. Nutrient interception by a riparian forest receiving cropland runoff. Journal of Environmental Quality 22:467-473. (Pubitemid 23249650)
45. Jordan, T. E D. L. Correll, and D. E. Weller. 1997a. Effects of agriculture on discharges of nutrients from Coastal Plain watersheds of Chesapeake Bay. Journal of Environmental Quality 26:836-848. (Pubitemid 27213270)
46. Jordan, T. E D. L. Correll, and D. E. Weller. 1997b. Nonpoint source discharges of nutrient from Piedmont watersheds of Chesapeake Bay. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 33:631-645. (Pubitemid 27312671)
47. Jordan, T. E D. L. Correll, and D. E. Weller. 1997c. Relating nutrient discharges from watersheds to land use and streamflow variability. Water Resources Research 33:2579-2590. (Pubitemid 27506543)
48. Jordan, T. E., and D. E. Weller. 1996. Human contributions to terrestrial nitrogen flux. BioScience 46:655-664. (Pubitemid 26369162)
49. Jordan, T. E D. E. Weller, and D. L. Correll. 2003. Sources of nutrient inputs to the Patuxent River estuary. Estuaries 26:226-243. (Pubitemid 36844403)
50. Kellogg, D. Q A. J. Gold, P. M. Groffman, M. H. Stolt, and K. Addy. 2008. Riparian ground-water flow patterns using flownet analysis: evapotranspiration-induced upwelling and implications for N removal. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 44:1024-1034.
51. Kemp, W. M., et al. 2005. Eutrophication of Chesapeake Bay: historical trends and ecological interactions. Marine Ecology Progress Series 303:1-29. (Pubitemid 41820699)
52. King, R. S M. E. Baker, D. F. Whigham, D. E. Weller, T. E. Jordan, P. F. Kazyak, and M. K. Hurd. 2005. Spatial considerations for linking watershed land cover to ecological indicators in streams. Ecological Applications 51:137-152.
53. Langland, M. J P. L. Lietman, and S. Hoffman. 1995. Synthesis of nutrient and sediment data for watersheds within the Chesapeake drainage basin. U. S. Geological Survey Water Resources Investigations Report 95-4233. Lemoyne, Pennsylvania, USA.
54. Linker, L. C G. W. Shenk, R. L. Dennis, and J. S. Sweeney. 2000. Cross-media models of the Chesapeake Bay watershed and airshed. Water Quality and Ecosystems Modeling 1:91:122.
55. Liu, Z.-J D. E. Weller, D. L. Correll, and T. E. Jordan. 2000. Effects of land cover and geology on stream chemistry in watersheds of Chesapeake Bay. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 36:1349-1365. (Pubitemid 32111297)
56. Lowrance, R. R., et al. 1997. Water quality functions of riparian forest buffers in Chesapeake Bay watersheds. Environmental Management 21:687-712.
57. Lowrance, R. R R. Todd, J. Fail, O. Hendrickson, R. Leonard, and L. Asmussen. 1984. Riparian forests and nutrient filters in agricultural watersheds. BioScience 34:374-377.
58. Maxted, J. T M. W. Diebel, and J. Vander Zanden. 2009. Landscape planning for agricultural non-point source pollution reduction II: balancing watershed size, number of watersheds, and implementation effort. Environmental Management 43:60-68.
59. Mayer, P. M S. K. Reynolds, M. D. McCutchen, and T. J. Canfield. 2007. Meta-analysis of nitrogen removal in riparian buffers. Journal of Environmental Quality 36:1172-1180. (Pubitemid 47057959)
60. McClain, M. E E. W. Boyer, C. L. Dent, S. E. Gergel, N. B. Grimm, P. M. Groffman, S. C. Hart, J. W. Harvey, C. A. Johnston, E. Mayorga, W. H. McDowell, and G. Pinay. 2003. Biogeochemical hot spots and hot moments at the interface of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Ecosystems 6:301-312. (Pubitemid 38131650)
61. McGlynn, B. L., and J. Seibert. 2003. Distributed assessment of contributing area and riparian buffering along stream networks. Water Resources Research 39:WR001521.
62. Mulholland, P. J A. M. Helton, G. C. Poole, R. O. Hall, S. K. Hamilton, B. J. Peterson, J. L. Tank, L. R. Ashkenas, L. W. Cooper, and S. L. Johnson. 2008. Stream denitrification across biomes and its response to anthropogenic nitrate loading. Nature 452:202-205. (Pubitemid 351380244)
63. Murphy, P. N. C J. Ogilvie, and P. Arp. 2009. Topographic modelling of soil moisture conditions: a comparison and verification of two models. European Journal of Soil Science 60:94-109.
64. National Research Council. 2004. Adaptive management for water resources project planning. National Academy Press, Washington, D. C., USA.
65. Neter, J W. Wasserman, and M. H. Kutner. 1990. Applied linear statistical models. Richard D. Irwin, Inc., Burr Ridge, Illinois, USA.
66. Newbold, J. D S. Herbert, B. W. Sweeney, P. Kiry, and S. J. Alberts. 2010. Water quality functions of a 15-year-old riparian forest buffer system. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 46:299-310.
67. Norton, M. M., and T. R. Fisher. 2000. The effects of forest on stream water quality in two coastal plain watersheds of the Chesapeake Bay. Ecological Engineering 14:337-361.
68. O'Brien, R. M. 2007. A caution regarding rules of thumb for variance inflation factors. Quality and Quantity 41:673-690.
69. O'Callaghan, J. F., and D. M. Mark. 1984. The extraction of drainage networks from digital elevation data. Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing 28:323-344.
70. Omernik, J. M A. R. Abernathy, and L. M. Male. 1981. Stream nutrient levels and proximity of agricultural and forest land to streams: some relationships. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 36:227-231. (Pubitemid 12224051)
71. O'Neill, M. P J. C. Schmidt, J. P. Dobrowolski, C. P. Hawkins, and C. M. U. Neale. 1997. Identifying sites for riparian wetland restoration: application of a model to the upper Arkansas River basin. Restoration Ecology 5:85-102. (Pubitemid 127685740)
72. O'Neill, R. V C. T. Hunsaker, S. P. Timmins, B. L. Jackson, K. B. Jones, K. H. Riitters, and J. D. Wickham. 1996. Scale problems in reporting landscape pattern at the regional scale. Landscape Ecology 11:169-180. (Pubitemid 126723325)
73. Osborne, L. L., and D. A. Kovacic. 1993. Riparian vegetated buffer strips in water-quality restoration and stream management. Freshwater Biology 29:243-258. (Pubitemid 24411236)
74. Osborne, L. L., and M. J. Wiley. 1988. Empirical relationships between land use/cover and stream water quality in an agricultural watershed. Journal of Environmental Management 26:9-27.
75. Peterjohn, W. T., and D. L. Correll. 1984. Nutrient dynamics in an agricultural watershed: observations on the role of a riparian forest. Ecology 65:1466-1475. (Pubitemid 16276642)
76. Phillips, J. D. 1989. An evaluation of the factors determining the effectiveness of water quality buffer zones. Journal of Hydrology 107:133-145. (Pubitemid 19306624)
77. Preston, S. D., and J. W. Brakebill. 1999. Application of spatially referenced regression modeling for the evaluation of total nitrogen loading in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Water Resources Investigations Report 99-4054. U. S. Geological Survey, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
78. R Development Core Team. 2008. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
79. Rabalais, N. N R. E. Turner, and W. J. Wiseman. 2001. Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Journal of Environmental Quality 30:320-329. (Pubitemid 32424051)
80. Rosenblatt, A. E A. J. Gold, M. H. Stolt, P. M. Groffman, and D. Q. Kellogg. 2001. Identifying riparian sinks for watershed nitrate using soil surveys. Journal of Environmental Quality 30:1596-1604. (Pubitemid 32867915)
81. Sabater, S A. Butturini, J. Clement, T. Burt, D. Dowrick, M. Hefting, V. Matre, G. Pinay, C. Postolache, M. Rzepecki, and F. Sabater. 2003. Nitrogen removal by riparian buffers along a European climatic gradient: patterns and factors of variation. Ecosystems 6:20-30. (Pubitemid 36317640)
82. SAS Institute. 2004. SAS 9.1.3. SAS Institute, Cary, North Carolina, USA.
83. Seibert, J., and B. L. McGlynn. 2007. A new triangular multiple flow direction algorithm for computing upslope areas from gridded digital elevation models. Water Resources Research 43:W04501.
84. Simley, J. D., and W. J. Carswell, Jr. 2009. The national map-hydrography: fact sheet 2009-3054. U. S. Geological Survey, Washington, D. C., USA.
85. Smith, A. C N. Koper, C. M. Francis, and L. Fahrig. 2009. Confronting collinearity: comparing methods for disentangling the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation. Landscape Ecology 24:1271-1285.
86. Smith, R. A G. E. Schwarz, and R. B. Alexander. 1997. Regional interpretation of water-quality monitoring data. Water Resources Research 33:2781-2798. (Pubitemid 27526636)
87. Speiran, G. K. 2010. Effects of groundwater-flow paths on nitrate concentrations across two riparian forest corridors. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 46:246-260.
88. Tarboton, D. G., and M. E. Baker. 2008. Toward an algebra for terrain-based flow analysis. Page 167-194 in N. Mount, G. Harvey, G. Priesthall, and P. Apin, editors. Representing, modeling, and visualizing the natural environment. Innovations in GIS series. CRC Press-Taylor and Francis, London, UK.
89. Tomer, M. D M. G. Dosskey, M. R. Burkart, D. E. James, M. J. Helmers, and D. E. Eisenhauer. 2009. Methods to prioritize placement of riparian buffers for improved water quality. Agroforestry Systems 75:17-25.
90. Tomer, M D. E. James, and T. M. Isenhart. 2003. Optimizing the placement of riparian practices in watershed using terrain analysis. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 58:198-206. (Pubitemid 37343088)
91. Turner, R. E., and N. N. Rabalais. 1991. Changes in Mississippi River water quality this century. BioScience 41:140-47.
92. U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2000. Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) database. U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D. C., USA. (http://www.epa.gov/mrlcpage)
93. U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2006. Protecting the forests of the Chesapeake watershed. Chesapeake Executive Council Directive No. 06-1, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D. C, USA. (http://www. chesapeakebay.net/content/publications/cbp-12604.pdf)
94. U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2009. Health and restoration assessment: riparian forest buffers planted. U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D. C, USA. (http://www.chesapeakebay.net/status- forestbuffers.aspx?menu%20item=19723)
95. Vidon, P C. Allan, D. Burns, T. P. Duval, N. Gurwick, S. Inamdar, R. Lowrance, J. Okay, D. Scott, and S. Sebestyen. 2010. Hot spots and hot moments in riparian zones: potential for improved water quality management. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 46:278-298.
96. Vidon, P C. Allan, and R. Lowrance. 2008. Generalizing riparian zone function at the landscape scale. Water Resources Impact 10:12-14.
97. Vidon, P. G. F., and A. R. Hill. 2004. Landscape controls on nitrate removal in stream riparian zones. Water Resources Research 40:W03201.
98. Vogelmann, J. E T. Sohl, and S. M. Howard. 1998a. Regional characterization of land cover using multiple sources of data. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 64:45-67.
99. Vogelmann, J. E T. Sohl, S. M. Howard, and D. M. Shaw. 1998b. Regional land cover characterization using Landsat Thematic Mapper data and ancillary data sources. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 51:415-428. (Pubitemid 28181440)
100. Weller, D. E T. E. Jordan, and D. L. Correll. 1998. Heuristic models for material discharge from landscapes with riparian buffers. Ecological Applications 8:1156-1169. (Pubitemid 28547999)
101. Weller, D. E T. E. Jordan, D. L. Correll, and Z. J. Liu. 2003. Effect of land-use change on nutrient discharges from the Patuxent River watershed. Estuaries and Coasts 26:244-266. (Pubitemid 36844404)