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Estimation Of Watershed Nitrate Loads On Drained Agricultural Lands, Yan Jiang

Open Access Theses

Estimation of nutrient load is critical for many applications in water quality management; however, infrequent data monitoring and measurement error could raise considerable uncertainty in the load estimations. The objectives of this study were to quantify the overall uncertainty in annual nitrate-N load estimates, and develop a statistical model to predict nitrate loads based on subsurface drainage characteristics in Indiana watersheds. Nitrate was selected as the study object because of the high loads common in Midwestern streams, and its important influence on hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.

A standard error propagation method was used to quantify the uncertainty from …