Articles scientifiques



Type : Articles scientifiques
Auteur(s) : Quilbé, R., A.N. Rousseau, M. Duchemin, A. Poulin, G. Gangbazp et J.P. Villeneuve
Année : 2006
Titre : Selecting a calculation method to estimate sediment and nutrient loads in streams : application to the Beaurivage River (Québec, Canada)
Orientation : Proposer des pratiques culturales et des aménagements hydro-agricoles
Publication : Journal of Hydrology
Volume : 326
Numéro : 1-4
Pages : 295-310.
Résumé : Estimation of sediment and nutrient loads is of crucial interest for a good assessment of water pollution. This paper proposes an overview of existing estimation methods and a framework to select the most suited one given available streamflow and concentration data. Correlations between contaminant concentration and streamflow should first be checked to generate missing concentration values by regression. However, correlations are not always strong, in which case the ratio estimator method is more appropriate. Given a 6-year data set (1989–1995) from the Beaurivage River (Québec, Canada) with, at best, a weekly sampling, the ratio estimator method was selected to estimate annual and seasonal loads of sediments and nutrients (N and P). Results show relatively steady annual loads (on average 8.1 and 1.1 kg ha yr -1 for total dissolved N and total P, respectively) and a low erosion rate (0.23 t ha yr -1). The results also confirm that nutrient and sediment transport via runoff is essentially a springtime process in this region, and they indicate that dissolved P represents the bulk of the total P load, most likely due to artificial subsurface drainage systems in the watershed. These results are compared to the results obtained by using averaging methods and to several other sources of information from literature, confirming the order of magnitude but highlighting some remaining uncertainties. Finally, some research avenues are proposed to improve the proposed framework and to investigate other estimation methods adapted to data characteristics.

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