The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events driven by climate change have intensified water quality degradation in rivers by increasing the generation of pollutants such as soil particles, nutrients, and organic matter during rai...
The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events driven by climate change have intensified water quality degradation in rivers by increasing the generation of pollutants such as soil particles, nutrients, and organic matter during rainfall–runoff processes. To mitigate nonpoint source pollution, governmental agencies have increasingly applied watershed-scale best management practices(BMPs) using hydrological modeling approaches. Among various hydrological models, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool(SWAT) enables quantitative evaluation of agricultural BMPs, such as tillage, fertilizer application, and vegetative buffer strips, as well as nonpoint source pollution control practices applied in urban and forested areas at the Hydrologic Response Unit(HRU) scale through its management operation(.ops) functionality.
However, the SWAT model applies a single, fixed efficiency for each management practice throughout the entire simulation period, which limits its ability to account for changes in BMP performance caused by aging, inadequate maintenance, or long-term operational conditions. In this study, a new SWAT module was developed to incorporate dynamic BMP efficiency changes, including both degradation and recovery processes. The proposed module represents gradual efficiency decline over time as well as efficiency improvement associated with maintenance activities, and its performance was evaluated in the Gyeongancheon watershed.
The developed module calculates annual BMP efficiency variations based on an efficiency estimation function incorporating initial efficiency, minimum efficiency, total lifecycle duration, elapsed time, decay coefficient, and decay exponent. To enable annual application of the calculated efficiencies, the SWAT source code was modified to represent time-varying BMP efficiency degradation under diverse operational conditions. The applicability of the proposed dynamic BMP efficiency module was evaluated using existing BMP-based management scenarios in the Gyeongancheon watershed, and its performance was compared with that of the conventional SWAT model.
To quantitatively assess the impact of incorporating time-varying BMP efficiency, scenarios with different agricultural land area ratios were applied. The results showed that, under the scenario with 50% agricultural land application, the difference in annual average soil loss between the developed module and the conventional SWAT model was approximately 0.92 ton/ha/year, while under the 100% agricultural land application scenario, the difference increased to approximately 1.64 ton/ha/year. These results indicate that the conventional SWAT model tends to overestimate BMP effectiveness when fixed efficiencies are applied. Therefore, the proposed module is expected to reduce uncertainty and overestimation in BMP performance assessment, contributing to the establishment of more realistic and achievable pollution reduction targets.