Environmental Impact of Land Use in Rural Regions

The concern over groundwater contamination has focused attention on the processes that influence the fate of chemicals in soil water systems. A major concern of groundwater contamination is the passage of these chemcials through the unsaturated zone and the relatively thin cover layers overlying the aquifers. Pollution due to diffuse sources is probably the most difficult to model. This is because the loads are usually non-homogeneous and they are also governed by spatially and temporally non-homogeneous, but dynamic, processes of chemical and biochemical phenomena.In this book, the estimation techniques and transfer functions of required input data from existing databases in geographic information systems are provided. Spatially variable input data, such as the type of soil, hydrological conditions, intensity of land use and atmospheric deposit of pollutants, are derived from basic land and climate characteristics. A model for the evaluation of land use and water management is also described. In addition, examples of field and regional studies on water management and policy analysis are provided.