Modelling impacts of a municipal spatial plan of land-use changes on surface water quality—example from Goriška Brda in Slovenia

Glavan, Matjaž (author), Bele, Sara (author), Curk, Miha (author), Pintar, Marina (author)

Intensive agriculture causes nutrient leaching and accelerates erosion processes, which threatens the good quality status of surface waters, as proposed by the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive. The purpose of this study was to define the impact of two alternative agricultural land-use change scenarios defined in a Municipal Spatial Plan on surface water quality by using the Agricultural Policy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) model. As experimental area, we chose a small Kožbanjšček stream catchment (1464 ha) situated in the Goriška Brda region in Slovenia. The area, due to favorable conditions for vineyards, is facing increasing deforestation. The change of 66.3 ha of forests to vineyards would increase the sediment, nitrate, and phosphorus loads in the stream by 24.8%, 17.1%, and 10.7%, respectively. With the implementation of vegetative buffer strips as a mitigation measure of the current situation, we could reduce the sediment, nitrate, and phosphorus loads by 17.9%, 11.1%, and 3.1%, respectively, while a combination of the two land-use change scenarios would result in a slight increase of the above-mentioned loads, corresponding to 0.61%, 2.1%, and 6.6%, respectively, compared to the baseline situation. The results confirm that, as we can increase pollution levels with deforestation, we can also reduce water pollution by choosing proper types of land management measures.

• Language: English
• Keywords: APEX, land-use change, forest, vineyard, mitigation measure, vegetative buffer strips, municipal spatial plan, Goriška Brda
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: BF - Biotechnical Faculty
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2020
• Number of pages: 21 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 12, iss. 1, art. 189
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-133290
• UDC: 556
• ISSN on article: 2073-4441
• DOI: 10.3390/w12010189
• COBISS.SI-ID: 9389177
• Publication date in RUL: 19.11.2021

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Water
• Shortened title: Water
• Publisher: Molecular Diversity Preservation International - MDPI
• ISSN: 2073-4441
• COBISS.SI-ID: 36731653

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 09.01.2020

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: občinski prostorski plan, planiranje prostora, vplivi na okolje, politika, kakovost voda, kmetijstvo, prostorska politika, modeliranje