How to decrease the pollution to the Baltic Sea?
A 2-day workshop was organized by Bioforsk on how to model the riverine loads of nutrients to the Baltic Sea. Professor Srinivasan Ragahavan from Texas University was invited to give the latest developments in the SWAT model; a model widely used world-wide. In addition, 12 other participants from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Latvia and Estonia showed the present status regarding diffuse nutrient runoff from agricultural fields in their respective countries. The workshop concluded that there is particular challenge to quantify the degree of the relative share of surface and sub-surface runoff. The latter is particularly important in the Nordic Baltic countries with intensive tile-drainage systems. Other challenges are related to how to obtain the necessary detailed input data for the simulation models and how to deal with winter conditions, especially seen within a climate change context and the assumed increase in freezing-thawing cycles effecting soil- and phosphorus loss to both open wat
