Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

Agricultural reservoirs in Korea have been recognized as an emerging resource for recreational and cultural activities for residents. However, most of the reservoirs are eutrophic and showing high level of contamination with nuisance algal bloom and offensive odor during the summer. For better management and restoration of the reservoirs’ water quality, scientific modeling approaches could be used to diagnose the problems and evaluate the efficacy of alternative control measures. The objectives of this study were to validate the performance of a three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic and water quality model (Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code, EFDC) for a eutrophic agricultural reservoir and assess the effect of bypassing of the effluent from a wastewater treatment plant on the reservoir water quality. The 3D model successfully simulated the temporal variations of water temperature, DO, TOC, nitrogen and phosphorus species and Chl-a observed in 2014 and also captured their spatial heterogeneity in the reservoir. The simulation results indicated that the point source bypassing may reduce the T-N and T-P concentrations of the reservoir by 6.6 ~ 8.2 %, and 1.7 ~ 16.8 %, respectively. The bypassing, however, showed a marginal effect on the control of TOC due to the increased algal biomass associated with the increased water retention time after bypassing as well as the lower TOC level of the effluent compared to the ambient reservoir water.