Application of environmental models to different hydrological systems

In recent years global problems such as climatic change, acid rain, and water pollution in surface and subsurface environments dominate discussions of world environmental problems. In this paper, the roles of hydrologic processes and hydrogeochemical processes are investigated through development, modification, and application of mathematical models for addressing point and non-point source water quality modelling of receiving waters: surface water, subsurface water and lake water. The paper describes the use of models to simulate the movements of pollutants and water: subsurface water, surface water and lake sediments. A hydrological model was applied to Northeast Pond River watershed to understand climate change effects in the watershed. Four watershed acidification models were applied to compute hydrogen ion, alkalinity and sulphate concentrations from Turkey Lakes watershed, Canada. The computed hydrogen ion was used to estimate acidic events, magnitude of hydrogen ion, and duration using a stochastic model. There exist uncertainties in environmental models due to imperfect knowledge of processes controlling water quality parameters as well as errors in data. Monte Carlo, first order, and inverse method analyses were used to assess uncertainty in models. SUTRA (saturated-unsaturated transport) and SUTRA(-1) models were applied to Lambton county, Ontario, Canada to locate groundwater discharge areas for St. Clair River, calculate discharge rates, and hydrogeologic parameters. A sediment contamination model was developed and applied to Great Lakes sediment data to estimate transport parameters by Pb-210 data. It was then coupled with fatty acid data and results were compared with observed data. A contaminant transport model was developed and applied to two North American streams to compute stream water concentration. The computed data was compared with observed data using a simple statistical method. A hydrological model was coupled with water quality models and RAISON (regional analysis by intelligent systems on) expert system and applied to Canadian watersheds. Digital satellite data was used to locate groundwater discharge and recharge areas in the watershed. This data is useful as observed data for hydrological modelling and GIS (Geographical Information System) system. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.