ABSTRACT
Water quality is an important factor for human health and quality of life (Sivertun and Prange 2003). In the last several decades, rapid land use and land cover changes (LUCCs) across river basins have oftentimes caused serious environmental degradation. The increase of pollutant loads such as nitrogen and phosphorus to the river due to LUCC at the basin scale has become one of the major sources of water pollution (Krenkel and Novotny 1980; Lewis et al. 1984; He et al. 2011). The eutrophication of coastal waters as a result of the delivery of excess nutrients by rivers is a critical environmental issue on local, regional, and global scales (Smith et al. 2005;
3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 35 3.2 Literature Review ........................................................................................... 37 3.3 Materials and Methods ................................................................................... 39
3.3.1 An Efžcient Method to Estimating Pollutant Loads .......................... 39 3.3.2 Generation of the LULC Map with Remote Sensing Images .............40 3.3.3 Model Calibration for Different Pollutants ......................................... 41
3.4 Results and Discussion ................................................................................... 41 3.4.1 Data Collection and Analysis ............................................................. 41 3.4.2 Characteristics of River Basins in Japan ............................................ 43 3.4.3 Land Cover Classižcation ................................................................... 43 3.4.4 Statistical Analysis .............................................................................44 3.4.5 Annual Pollutant Load Assessment ....................................................46
