D'Ambrosio, Ersilia, De Girolamo, Anna Maria, Spanò, Marinella, Corbelli, Vera, Capasso, Gennaro, Morea, Massimo, Velardo, Raffaele, Abdelwahab, Ossama M.M., Lonigro, Antonio, Milillo, Fabio, Ricci, Giovanni Francesco, Romano, Giovanni, Calabrese, Angelantonio, Casale, Barbara, Mauro, Roberto, Pappagallo, Giuseppe, and Gentile, Francesco
The objective of the present work is a spatial analysis aimed at supporting hydrological and water quality model applications in the Canale d'Aiedda basin (Puglia, Italy), a data-limited area. The basin is part of the sensitive environmental area of Taranto that requires remediation of the soil, subsoil, surface water, and groundwater. A monitoring plan was defined to record the streamflow and water quality parameters needed for calibrating and validating models, and a database archived in a GIS environment was built, which includes climatic data, soil hydraulic parameters, groundwater data, surface water quality parameters, point-source parameters, and information on agricultural practices. Based on a one-year monitoring of activities, the average annual loads of N-NO3 and P-PO4 delivered to the Mar Piccolo amounted to about 42 t year−1, and 2 t year−1, respectively. Knowledge uncertainty in monthly load estimation was found to be up to 25% for N-NO3 and 40% for P-PO4. The contributions of point sources in terms of N-NO3 and P-PO4 were estimated at 45% and 77%, respectively. This study defines a procedure for supporting modelling activities at the basin scale for data-limited regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]