Short-term climate change influence on surface water quality impacts from agricultural activities.

Climate change is a global phenomenon that directly affects agriculture by altering crop yield, nutritional quality, pests, and plant diseases. The North Aegean Basin located in Turkey has considerable agricultural importance due to its fertile soils. Agricultural activities have increased significantly and uncontrollably in the last decade, resulting in dramatic changes in nitrate and phosphorus levels in surface water within the watershed. Changes in climatic conditions have the potential to impact the quantity and quality of water resources. Best management practices (BMPs) are presently utilized as a planning tool to enhance the quality of water resources. To develop policies in this regard, it is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of BMPs. To this end, this study aims to investigate the potential effect of climate change on the surface water quality of the North Aegean Basin. For the period between 2010 and 2030, global climate data retrieved from Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 and regionally downscaled were used to feed the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. The various potential BMP scenarios were developed and simulated in the hydrological model by considering the effects of climate change. The RCP4.5 scenario reduced the precipitation by 15.11%, while the RCP8.5 scenario reduced the precipitation by 10.97%. Decreased precipitation also affected the runoff and the nutrient loads and concentrations. As a result of the RCP4.5 simulation, TP and TN concentrations increased by 24.42% and 58.45%, respectively, in the IST_KEN014 station. Improvements were observed in TN and TP concentrations with the effect of applied BMP simulations. Also, the results revealed that the applied BMP scenarios may contribute to considerable reductions in nutrient loads. Considering the RCP4.5 scenario, BMPs reduced TN loads in the basin by 2.42-10.97%, while reducing TP loads by around 3.60-16.81%. Considering the RCP8.5 scenario, the BMPs reduced the TN loads in the basin between 2.21 and 10.04%, while they reduced the TP loads between 3.57 and 16.67%.

Determination of peaking factors for sewerage system in Antalya, tourism capital of Turkey.

The design of wastewater system pipe size is traditionally based on the maximum wastewater flow that is a function of multiple factors. Understanding the appropriate peaking factors (PF) by using daily flow variations through wastewater collection systems (WWCS) is essential for cost-effective design. This paper describes the maximum and minimum PFs by using wastewater flow data of four separate residential areas such as Lara, Belek-1, Kemer, and Hurma in Antalya, which is the tourism capital of Turkey. The study involves the analysis of wastewater data recorded at daily interval for two different time periods (2006-2009 and 2016-2019) in Antalya. There is a comprehensive investigation regarding PFs that involves sustained peaking flow and percentiles. Therefore, a new empirical equation was proposed by using wastewater flowrate for the estimation of the maximum daily peaking factor. When the daily PFs are determined in the range of 1.31-1.52, 1.60-2.58, 2.26-3.29, and 1.93-2.29 for Lara, Belek-1, Kemer, and Hurma wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) for 2016-2019 time period, they are in the range of 2.19-2.93 and 1.95-3.31 for Lara and Hurma WWTPs for the time period of 2006-2009, respectively. In brief, this study presents a comprehensive calculation of PFs with a determination of their sustained flow analysis with different durations and percentiles. PRACTITIONER POINTS: This study presents the findings regarding peaking factors and its statistical analysis for different time periods. Statistical analysis included sustained flow, and the percentile of peaking factors was applied to waste water flow data for touristic city of Antalya. The new formula of P F max , d r y = 39.18 ⋅ ( Q a v , d ) - 0.32 was determined by using more touristic areas of Antalya within the scope of estimation of the daily peaking factor for dry weather flow by using average daily wastewater flowrate data with the determination coefficient of 0.95.