W/WS: Comprehensive Watershed Management: A Spatial Water Quality Assessment System (SWQAS)

ABSTRACT 97-26863 Knight W/WS: Comprehensive watershed management: A spatial water quality assessment system The complex distribution of physical, chemical, biological and human forces in space and time exerts significant effects on the magnitude and location of pollution impacts. This project will develop a decision support system linking ecological; hydrological/geochemical/engineering; and social science research to address two questions: 1) How can multiple goals for improvement of river water quality and ecosystem integrity be accomplished under various scenarios of present and future climatic variability and socio-economic change? and 2) How do different geographical patterns of water quality inform potential societal decisions affecting water pollution abatement? The project incorporates community-based decision making and the role of cities, emerging suburbs and rural areas as pollution sources using the Yantra River Basin in Bulgaria as a case study. The investigators will test the specific hypothesis that spatial and temporal interactions of water quality improvement investments generate significantly different patterns of pollution abatement.