Using critical source areas for targeting cost-effective best management practices to mitigate phosphorus and sediment transfer at the watershed scale

Peter Strauss, Antonio Leone, Maria Ripa, Nadine Turpin, Jean-Marie Lescot and Ramon Laplana

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The impact of implementing different best management practices (BMPs) at the small watershed scale were examined for the Petzenkirchen catchment in Austria and Lake Vico in Italy, in terms of data needs, hydrological processes, tools and models involved. Identification of critical source areas for targeting soil and phosphorus losses turned out to be crucial for correct allocation of BMPs. Comparison of environmental effectiveness and costs, both calculated using various modelling approaches, enabled us to compare different levels of introducing BMPs ecologically and economically. Within each catchment, small areas of land tended to be the source of disproportionately large amounts of pollution . Therefore, confining mitigation to these areas costs less than targeting wider areas. This suggests that a policy for environmental programmes should be focussed on hydrological units and critical source areas within these units instead of introducing universal controls - the ‘watering can’ principle - as practised today.

Keywords: Best management practice; watershed; sediment; phosphorus; critical source area; cost-effectiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q12 Q25 Q52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Soil Use and Management 25 (2007): pp. 144-153

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/66256/1/MPRA_paper_66256.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:66256

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().