Simulation of nonpoint source pollutant loadings from urban area during rainfall: an application of a physically-based distributed model Available to Purchase

A physically-based, distributed model, PROUW, is applied to a small urban watershed in Japan with an area of 66.18 ha. The model includes a description of evapotranspiration, percolation, runoff generation, overland flow routing, pollutant accumulation in dry weathers and washoff during storm events, overland pollutant routing, and flow and pollutant routing in drainage system. The finite difference schematization of the urban watershed provides a representation of the spatial pattern of topography, land-use, soil types and meteorological inputs. The watershed is divided into 7500 grids of 10m × 10m and the runoff rate and pollutant loadings are simulated with a time step of 5 sec. The data for the storm event of April 28, 1995 is used for model calibration. Simulated hydrograph and pollutographs of the storm event of April 18, 1995 are compared with the observed data. Results show a reasonable degree of fit, indicating that the model provides a reasonable interpretation of the overall runoff and pollutant generation processes in the urban area. The results also suggest that the model should be improved further by incorporating new reliable equations for pollutant washoff estimation.