Catchment scale assessment of river-water quality in an ungauged environment

Abstract

This paper examines the application of coupled integrated model SWAT with emphasis on dynamic, physically-based modelling approaches that integrate the effects of different environmental processes across catchment scales in characterising and quantifying river water quality status. The plan is to address morphological and ecological impacts on streams and by extension, the creation of a link to correctly assess river water quality based on the attributes of the delineated catchment in ungauged and data-poor environments. The resultant pollutions are conditioned on the heterogeneity of the landscape features that control both hydrology and pollutant export coefficients which are variably distributed across catchment. The study area was delineated into five (5) landuse, land cover attributes: forest, cultivation, impervious, urbanisation and industrial within the following settlements, Ita-Iku, ABUAD farm, Ago-Aduloju, Igbemo, Ogbese-Ise and Ita-Ogbolu. A total of twenty-nine quality parameters were invesigated with the results indicating that the regions with with close proximity to emerging urbanisation and industrial development were most impacted. This serves as a policy guiding tool for water resource managers to incorporate different management scenarios in the surface water pollution abatement and control.Keywords: Water quality, catchment delineation, pollution abatement