• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.297-305
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• 2023

The recycled irrigation is a type of irrigation that uses downstream water to fulfill irrigation demand in the upstream agricultural areas; the used irrigation water returns back to the downstream. The recycled irrigation is advantageous for securing irrigation water for plant growth, but the returned water typically contains high levels of nutrients due to excess nutrients inputs during the agricultural activities, potentially deteriorating stream water quality. Therefore, quantitative assessment on the effect of the recycled irrigation on the stream water quality is required to establish strategies for effective irrigation water supply and water quality management. For this purpose, a watershed model is generally used; however no functions to simulate the effects of the recycled irrigation are provided in the existing watershed models. In this study, we used multi-reservoir model coupled with the Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF) to estimate the effect of the recycled irrigation on the stream water quality. The study area was the Gwangok stream watershed, a subwatershed of Gyeseong stream watershed in Changnyeong county, Gyeongsangnam-do. The HSPF model was built, calibrated, and used to produce time series data of flow and water quality, which were used as hypothetical observation data to calibrate the multi-reservoir model. The calibrated multi-reservoir model was used for simulating the recycled irrigation. In the multi-reservoir model, the Gwangok watershed consisted of two subsystems, irrigation and the Gwangok stream, and the reactions (plant uptake, adsorption, desorption, and decay) within each subsystem, and fluxes of water and materials between the subsystems, were modeled. Using the developed model, three scenarios with different combinations of the operating conditions of the recycled irrigation were evaluated for their effects on the stream water quality.