Development and application of a nitrogen simulation model in a data scarce catchment in South China

The Xitiaoxi catchment is one of the most important catchments in the Taihu Basin in southeastern China. It contributes a significant amount of surface runoff and nutrient to Taihu Lake. Understanding the nutrient cycling and identification of critical non-point source pollution in this catchment are therefore of primary importance. In this paper, the Xinanjiang-Nitrogen (XAJ-N) model, a conceptual model of nutrient mobilization and transport is developed by integration of the Xinanjiang rainfall–runoff model, the Integrated Nitrogen CAtchment (INCA) model and the Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation (MUSLE). It is implemented with the environmental modelling language PCRaster and estimates the water fluxes and nutrient loadings on a cell-by-cell basis in daily time steps. The model includes the nitrogen cycling processes of mineralization, leaching, fixation, volatilization, nitrification, denitrification and plant uptake. Nitrogen is assumed to be mobilized by surface runoff and groundwater. The model performance was verified by comparing simulated and measured daily discharge and nutrient loadings. The results showed a fairly good relationship between predicted and observed values. Due to the scarce observed data, the simulation results were also validated using an internal mass balance method and values from the literature. It showed that the modelling approach can be used as a tool to estimate the export of nutrient with a daily resolution at a catchment scale.