A Spatially-Distributed Conceptual Model For Reactive Transport Of Phosphorus From Diffuse Sources: An Object-Oriented Approach

This paper presents CAMEL, a spatially-distributed conceptual model for simulating reactive transport of phosphorus from diffuse sources at the catchment scale. A catchment is represented in the model using a network of grid cells and each grid cell is comprised of various conceptual storages of water, sediment and phosphorus. To allow for reactive transport processes of phosphorus between grid cells, two cascade routing schemes are used for groundwater and channel water flows, respectively. The model has a modular, object-oriented structure so that it can be easily modified or extended and, furthermore, it can even provide a library of hydrological and hydrochemical processes from which the user can select a sub-set of processes suitable for a particular application. A verification study of the model has been carried out for a hypothetical catchment with satisfactory results.