Evaluating the impacts of sustainable land management practices on water quality in an agricultural catchment in Lower Austria using SWAT

Managing agricultural watersheds in an environmentally friendly manner necessitate the strategic implementation of well-targeted sustainable land management (SLM) practices that limit soil and nonpoint source pollution losses and translocation. Watershed-scale SLM-scenario modeling has the potential to identify efficient and effective management strategies from the field to the integrated landscape level. In a case study targeting a 66-hectare watershed in Petzenkirchen, Lower Austria, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was utilized to evaluate a variety of locally adoptable SLM practices. SWAT was calibrated and validated (monthly) at the catchment outlet for flow, sediment, nitrate-nitrogen (NO(3)–N), ammonium nitrogen (NH(4)–N), and mineralized phosphorus (PO(4)–P) using SWATplusR. Considering the locally existing agricultural practices and socioeconomic and environmental factors of the research area, four conservation practices were evaluated: baseline scenario, contour farming (CF), winter cover crops (CC), and a combination of no-till and cover crops (NT + CC). The NT + CC SLM practice was found to be the most effective soil conservation practice in reducing soil loss by around 80%, whereas CF obtained the best results for decreasing the nutrient loads of NO(3)–N and PO(4)–P by 11% and 35%, respectively. The findings of this study imply that the setup SWAT model can serve the context-specific performance assessment and eventual promotion of SLM interventions that mitigate on-site land degradation and the consequential off-site environmental pollution resulting from agricultural nonpoint sources. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10661-023-11079-y.