Excerpt
Water quality deterioration as a consequence of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution or diffuse pollution has been documented around the world (Davis and Koop 2006; Ma et al. 2011; Novotny 1999; Smith 2003). This deterioration not only damages the social and ecological functions of water bodies as water supply, fisheries, ecosystem maintenance, and recreation (Pretty et al. 2003), but also largely raises water treatment and policy response costs (Novotny 1999; Pretty et al. 2003). Understanding and evaluating the processes of pollution generation, transport, and transformation are continuous challenges for scientists and engineers. Modeling as a way to simplify the complex natural processes has been widely used in NPS pollution research (Zhuang et al. 2012). There are various NPS pollution models available now, which were summarized and compared in different previous studies (Alexander et al. 2002; Borah and Bera 2003; Shen et al. 2012). These reviews of available models are meaningful, though they hardly provide a direct overview of worldwide research efforts and the general trends in NPS pollution modeling. Since researchers have conducted research in this field for several decades, a comprehensive and quantitative review of past efforts, including influencing researchers and their performance, participating regions and their activity, and general…
- © 2014 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society