A large number of pathogens, micropollutants and their transformation products (veterinary and human pharmaceuticals, personal care products, pesticides and biocides, chlorinated compounds, heavy metals) pose a risk for soil, groundwater and surface water. The large diversity of compounds and of their sources makes the quantification of their occurrence in the terrestrial and aquatic environment across space and time a challenging task. Monitoring programmes cover a small selection out of the compound diversity and quantify these selected compounds only at coarse temporal and spatial resolution. Carefully designed monitoring however allows to detect and elucidate processes and to estimate parameters in the aquatic environment. Modeling is a complementary tool to generalize measured data and extrapolate in time and space, which is needed as a basis for decision making, but models cannot eliminate the uncertainties caused by limited data sets.
This session invites contributions that improve our quantitative understanding of the mass fluxes, the fate and transport of micropollutants and pathogens in the soil-groundwater-river continuum. The latest developments in micropollutant and pathogen modeling, specific process studies and monitoring shall be discussed. Approaches dealing with urban and agricultural sources of micropollutants and pathogens are especially encouraged.
Topics cover issues like:
- Use of micropollutants for detecting processes and determining parameters in the aquatic environment
- Application of innovative model concepts in hydrological modeling on model parameterization, calibration strategies, model structure evaluation, model/parameter uncertainty for micropollutant modelling at the catchment scale
- Novel sampling and monitoring concepts
- Experimental studies and new modelling approaches to quantify diffuse and point source inputs
- Comparative fate studies on parent compounds and transformation products
- Integrated transport modeling for mixed urban and agricultural catchments representing all relevant sources and pathways
- Optimal combination of modeling and monitoring to assess water quality with respect to micropollutants
- Connectivity of natural and anthropogenic flowpaths
A specific part of the session will deal with monitoring strategies in surface water and groundwater, focusing on the design and operation of efficient and effective monitoring programs supporting EU Directives such as the WFD, the Groundwater Directive and the Marine Strategy. This part of the session focuses on the application of high frequent, semi-continuous observation methods, on efficient monitoring strategies for detecting permanent changes of a system in time (trends), on the effective use of time averaged sampling methods and on the use of models in the design of monitoring strategies. The aim of the session is to bring together scientists from multiple disciplines, in order to interchange experiences in monitoring design, data-analysis and optimization methods.