You are currently viewing a new version of our website. To view the old version click .
Applied Sciences
  • This is an early access version, the complete PDF, HTML, and XML versions will be available soon.
  • Article
  • Open Access

29 November 2025

Forecasting and Fertilization Control of Agricultural Non-Point Source Pollution with Short-Term Meteorological Data

,
,
,
,
,
,
and
1
Faculty of Geomatics, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou 730070, China
2
National-Local Joint Engineering Research Center of Technologies and Applications for National Geographic State Monitoring, Lanzhou 730070, China
3
Key Laboratory of Science and Technology in Surveying & Mapping, Gansu Province, Lanzhou 730070, China
4
State Key Laboratory of Lake and Watershed Science for Water Security, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 211135, China

Abstract

Agricultural non-point source pollution (AGNPSP) is one of the core challenges facing global water environment management. Existing research mainly focuses on post-event estimation of pollution loads and source analysis, while studies on proactive risk warning for watershed non-point source pollution are relatively limited, especially those that integrate with agricultural production practices. Therefore, this study takes the River Tongyang Watershed as the research object and establishes a fertilization warning and regulation model based on short-term meteorological data. First, it simulates the migration and transformation processes of pollutants within the watershed under different meteorological conditions and analyzes their spatiotemporal evolution characteristics. Then, combined with real-time water quality monitoring data at the lake inlet, it calculates the residual environmental capacity for pollutants in the river water. Finally, based on this environmental capacity and the farmland area, it back-calculates the maximum safe fertilization amount for each plot under different meteorological scenarios to achieve precise fertilization management. When the planned fertilization amount does not exceed this maximum safe value, environmental risks are within a controllable range; if exceeded, fertilization should be proportionally reduced to prevent non-point source pollution. The results indicate that this model can accurately predict the concentration trends of non-point source pollutants and can develop differentiated fertilization strategies based on rainfall scenarios. The “fertilization determined by water” decision-making framework established in this study provides a technically significant pathway for shifting watershed agricultural non-point source pollution management from passive treatment to active prevention.

Article Metrics

Citations

Article Access Statistics

Multiple requests from the same IP address are counted as one view.