| The goal of the present work is to develop, implement and test a conceptual screening model for predicting water and solute discharges at Silver Springs, FL. The solute of particular interest is nitrate. Model inputs will include springshed hydrogeologic, climatic, hydrologicand land-use/land-cover data. The resulting model will provide the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) with an improved tool for Silver Springs management, as well as an underlying conceptual approach for potential application to other high-priority springsheds in the district.
Model development will be based on an overlay concept incorporating layers representing the most important factors effecting spring flow and nutrient loading. In addition to basic landform and hydrologic data a conceptualization of surface and subsurface water flow and solute transport travel times to the spring from various land surface locations throughout the springshed will be included. Relevant reactive transport parameters and travel time distributions will be represented with layers of a stochastic nature to reflect the dominant effects of spatial and temporal variability.
The critical underlying principles for the approach are practicality and parsimony. Conceptual and computational parsimony will facilitate model use by practitioners that are non-expert, but knowledgeable. Practicality will enable application and understanding of model outputs by novices and non-users. The model will also be flexible enough for modification by expert users. The Scope of Work is divided into the following four tasks to be performed over a period of 24 months: (1) Data and literature review; (2) Development of conceptual model; (3) Calibration and testing; (4) Application. |
