Modeling middle and final flush effects of urban runoff pollution in an urbanizing catchment

Abstract

In current literature, the first flush effect of urban runoff pollution has been studied and reported extensively. However, the effects of middle and final flushes on pollutant flushing were not given much attention. In addition, few previous studies have discussed the suitability of the widely used exponential wash-off model for describing the middle or final flush processes. In this paper, the Shiyan River catchment, a typical rapidly urbanizing catchment in China, is chosen as a study area to analyze the effects of first, middle and final flushes based on monitoring hydrographs and pollutographs. In order to simulate the middle and final flush processes observed in storm events, a new, realistically simple, parsimonious model (named as logistic wash-off model) is developed with the assumption that surface pollutant loads available for wash-off increase with cumulative runoff volume following a logistic curve. The popular exponential wash-off model and the newly developed model are used and compared in simulating the flush processes in storm events. The results indicate that all the three types of pollutant flushing are observed in the experiment; however, the first flush effect is weak, while the middle and final flush effects are substantial. The exponential model has performed well in simulating the first flush process but failed to simulate well the middle and final flush processes. However, the logistic wash-off model has effectively simulated all the three types of pollutant flush, and particularly, it has performed better in simulating the middle and final flush processes than the exponential model.