Decision Support Tool for energy-efficient, sustainable and integrated urban stormwater management

[EN] The use of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SUDS) to manage urban runoff and contribute to environmental and landscape improvement is now widely known, but its application is still limited in many regions, like in Mediterranean countries. In addition, there is a lack of Decision Support Tools that consider all their benefits in the decision making process in a clear and integrated holistic way. In this paper, the (ESTORMED)-S-2 Decision Support Tool is presented. This tool analyses the impact of stormwater management in the urban environment and introduces energetic and environmental criteria in the decision making process. Therefore, it aims to fill in the existing "gap" between SuDS manuals and guidelines and regional and local decision makers, since it quantifies SuDS benefits and includes them in the comparison of different stormwater scenarios. Finally, the results of applying this tool to compare drainage infrastructures in a real urban development are described. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The E2STORMED project (Reference: 1C-MED12-14), within which the Decision Support Tool described in this paper has been developed, was funded by the MED Programme of the European Union. Authors would also like to express their gratitude to the E2STORMED project partners for their assistance and collaboration in this work.Morales Torres, A.; Escuder Bueno, I.; Andrés Doménech, I.; Perales Momparler, S. (2016). Decision Support Tool for energy-efficient, sustainable and integrated urban stormwater management. Environmental Modelling & Software. 84:518-528. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2016.07.019S5185288

Correlation and Calibration of Soil‐Test Potassium from Different Soil Depths for Full‐Season Soybean on Coarse‐Textured Soils

Quantifying soil-K availabilities at deeper depths may be necessary to determine optimum fertilizer-K rate for soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] grown on low cation exchange capacity (CEC) soils that are prone to K leaching. We characterized full-season soybean response to fertilizer-K across 19 coarse-textured low- CEC sites during 2013 and 2014. Mehlich-1 soil-K concentrations at 0- to 15- and 0- to 30-cm depths better correlated with relative yield and explained 90% of relative yield variation compared to 77% for 0- to 60-cm depth. Critical soil-K concentrations were similar for relative yield, V5 plant-K concentration, and R2 leaf-K concentration, ranging from 48 to 73 mg K kg–1 for 0- to 15-cm and 41 to 63 mg K kg–1 for 0- to 30-cm depths. Soil-K concentrations less than this critical range accurately predicted positive yield responses to fertilizer-K 89% of the time for 0- to 15-cm and 80% for 0- to 30-cm depths. Plant- and leaf- K concentrations were equally good in predicting relative yield with critical concentrations of 19 to 22 g plant K kg–1 and 18 to 21 g leaf K kg–1. Plant-K concentration was better than leaf- K concentration in diagnosing K-deficient sites. Calibration model confirmed that soybean requires no fertilizer-K to maximize yield for soil-K concentrations above the critical ranges at both depths. However, for K-deficient soils, soil-K concentrations at 0- to 30-cm depth resulted in 7 to 32% less fertilizer-K requirements than 0- to 15-cm depth, indicating the value of deeper sample in recommending fertilizer-K for soybean grown on coarse-textured low-CEC soils