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The Watershed Approach to Understanding our Environment
Author(s) -
Woolhiser David A.
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
journal of environmental quality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.888
H-Index - 171
eISSN - 1537-2537
pISSN - 0047-2425
DOI - 10.2134/jeq1975.00472425000400010003x
Subject(s) - watershed , interpretation (philosophy) , mathematical model , computer science , quality (philosophy) , water quality , environmental science , environmental resource management , ecology , mathematics , machine learning , epistemology , philosophy , statistics , biology , programming language
Current approaches used in modeling a particular part of the human environment—the agricultural watershed—are reviewed and questions are raised regarding the objectives, approaches, and interpretation of agricultural water quality models. Models—either symbolic (mathematical) or material—are essential to understanding and predicting environmental phenomena on agricultural watersheds. Models describing the transport of water, sediment, and chemicals through a watershed system can become very complicated and frequently must be simplified. Simplifications inevitably involve distortion and may make interpretation of model parameters difficult. The use of material models may assist in interpreting the parameters of mathematical models.