Agricultural Impacts on Water Quality
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Resources Management, Policy and Governance".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2026 | Viewed by 7
Special Issue Editors
Interests: water quality; hydrology; water governance; water law; interdisciplinary approaches
Interests: nitrogen; leaching; water quality; modelling; mitigation measures
Interests: water quality; agriculture; monitoring; nutrients
Interests: surface water quality; phosphate; sediment transport; eutrophication; reduction measures; large-scale modeling; diffuse sources; point sources; artificial drainage; soil erosion
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: ground water quality; nitrate; pesticides; PFAS; redox chemistry; groundwater/surface water interaction; water governance; interdisciplinary approaches
Interests: ground water quality; nitrate; reduction measures; large-scale modeling; diffuse sources; policy advice
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Agriculture provides food, fibre, energy, and a livelihood for many people around the world. However, agricultural production also pollutes the terrestrial and aquatic environment with nutrients, pesticides, and other substances applied in agriculture, depending on the type and design of the agricultural system. Since the 1950s, agricultural production growth in Europe and North America, and more recently in many other parts of the world, has threatened the quality of groundwater and surface waters, leading to chemical and ecological deterioration.
Over the last decades, policies to overcome deterioration of water quality have been developed, and programmes of measures to improve water quality have been implemented worldwide. Although decades of research have improved our understanding of the soil–water system and the sources and effects of pollution, there is still a knowledge gap regarding the effectiveness of mitigation measures and the information needed to adequately support policy-making. Recent advancements in data collection, sensor measurements, and machine learning methods seem promising in overcoming this knowledge gap.
The implementation of measures is a multifaceted challenge that requires, for example, trade-offs between cost-intensive technical solutions and nature-based solutions (NbS) or between measures enforced by law and implementation on a voluntary basis. Fundamental financing issues need to be clarified as to whether costs should be charged to agriculture (polluter-pays-principle) or whether society should pay a higher price for clean water. Increasing climate change effects have to be taken into consideration as they can hamper implementation and success of measures.
These are some of the issues that should be addressed in this Special Issue from the Land Use and Water Quality (LUWQ) conference series, of which LUWQ2025 was held at Aarhus University from 3 to 6 June 2025.
Dr. Susanne Wuijts
Dr. Gitte Blicher-Mathiesen
Guest Editors
Dr. Richard van Duijnen
Guest Editor Assistant
Dr. Björn Tetzlaff
Lærke Thorling
Prof. Dr. Frank Wendland
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- land use and water quality
- agricultural impacts
- groundwater
- surface waters
- monitoring
- modelling
- management
- implementation of measures
- assessment of policies for water quality
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