ABSTRACT

Nutrient load estimation has been an important element in watershed management because it allows for more effective management of land use in order to minimize non-point source pollutant loads. Basic information needed for nutrient load calculations are river discharges and nutrient concentrations, which both are time and space dependent. In most cases, river discharges are readily available because of the relative ease and low cost of stream gauging (Quilbé et al., 2006). But the high cost of measuring nutrient concentration and laboratory analysis associated with it makes monitoring of concentrations difficult (Wang et al., 2011). Most studies on estimation of nutrient loads have dealt with cases where continuous discharge data over long period are available while concentrations are measured less frequent. Contrary, not much have been done in the case where both discharge and concentration data are measured less frequently as in the case of this study.