Pollution Routing in Streams

Abstract

A method for the numerical simulation of longitudinal dispersion of pollutants in streams is developed and tested. It is based on the one‐dimensional, linear advection‐dispersion equation and utilizes the concept of numerical dispersion to model the physical dispersion process in a manner similar to the one used in storage routing schemes of the Muskingum‐type. The finite difference scheme used is explicit, second‐order‐in‐space accurate, and stable when used to model physical dispersion phenomena. The validity and reliability of the computations are investigated in three examples.