INTERACT featured in international journal

An article published under the INTERACT project (“Integrative Research in Environment, Agro-Chains and Technology”) was recently featured in the “MethodsX” magazine of Elsevier.  This is another international recognition of a work produced within the project.

In the selection for 2019, Damià Barceló, editor for Environmental Sciences of “MethodsX” and also member of the Higher Council of Scientific Research in Barcelona (Spain), focused on “methods developed to determine and evaluate problems related to emerging contaminants, microplastics and nitrates in aquatic environment and wildlife”.

Published in 2018, the article “An approach to validate groundwater contamination risk in rural mountainous catchments: the role of lateral groundwater flows” was selected. For the editor of the journal, the article written in co-authorship by Fernando Pacheco, Lisa Martins, Mariana Quininha, Alcino Oliveira and Luís Filipe Fernandes, “corresponds to a validation of a computer model to determine the well known risk of groundwater nitrate contamination in rural environments”.

Unlike the “existing validation models”, the article describes a specific “cross-profile” model for river basins in mountainous areas, making the validation “dynamic”. Until now, validation models for groundwater contamination were based on the concept of “point matching”. However, in mountainous basins this method is not applicable, as the lateral flow of groundwater facilitates the transport of contaminants of agricultural origin from areas considered to be of higher risk to those of lower risk (forest areas).

With this model, validation is carried out “along the catchment flow lines” and taking into account the “specific times of groundwater movement”, being linked “to the similarity between the nitrate profiles measured” in these two stages. In other words, the article intends to demonstrate the existence of “spatio-temporal links” between “risk areas” (sources of contamination), “current nitrate plumes” (contaminated catchments existing today) and a “model of nitrate distribution over specific times”, thus perceiving how the contaminating elements are distributed over time.

The article is freely accessible and can be consulted on Elsevier’s website at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2018.11.002.