Topology-Based Method to Assess the Environmental Impact of Deicing Sodium Chloride

摘要

An approach is provided for simulating environmental impacts of road salt impact by providing a first-order salt load model that may be run on an information handling system to estimate the spatial differentiation on the environmental impact of road salt in a specified watershed area using only topological information for the specified watershed area. The disclosed salt load model employs a reservoir model to determine the salt loading coefficient c=1/(1+e^−λ) for each target point in the landscape, where the topographical index term λ may be efficiently computed by adjusting a topological wetness index term generated by the TOPMODEL runoff generation model to compute the salt loading coefficient c as a two-dimensional map using only topological or elevation data for the watershed area of interest.