Project 16: Erosional losses from agricultural land and Project 17: Sediment delivery ratios in small agricultural watershed and sediment integration aspects

This report describes the results of several integrated projects designed to further our understanding of the sources and magnitude of fluvial sediment derived from agricultural lands and delivered to the Canadian Great Lakes. This final report combines the results of the following study projects undertaken under PLUARG Task Group C (Canadian Section) - Activity 1: Project 16: Erosional losses from agricultural lands and Project 17: Sediment delivery ratios in small agricultural watershed, and Integration of studies dealing with or related to agriculturally derived sediments in the Canadian Great Lakes Drainage Basin (Projects #2A, 6A, 7, 15, 16, 17 and Task C Activity 6) . The aim of the integrated research projects has been to develop a capacity for predicting the source and magnitude of sediment derived from agricultural lands and delivered to the Canadian Great Lakes. The approach adopted for the broad problem of predicting the surface movement of pollutants from agricultural lands has involved five main stages. These include: (i) development of conceptual deterministic models of soil erosion and sediment transport from source to stream, (ii) testing, verification and improvement of the conceptual models with detailed data collected from a limited number of agricultural watersheds, (iii) testing of the spatial extrapolation capability of the models with monitored data collected from other IJC selected basins, (iv) testing of the temporal extrapolation capability of the models by comparing the sampled period of record (ie. 2 years) with a longer history of flows and extreme situations, and (v) integration of results generated from other PLUARG studies relating to erosion and sedimentation.