Dear Colleagues,

The urbanization process generates impacts on water resources and is directly involved in the alteration of the natural conditions and, consequently, reduction of groundwater recharge and increase of runoff and pollutant loads. In the modern era, diffuse water pollution from rural and urban sources has continuously and negatively impacted water resources, irrespective of the efforts made to the contrary. In order to minimize the problem and further improve the overall water quality of surface- and groundwater, long-term monitoring and further modeling are required. However, several research gaps still exist and need proper attention: What effective mitigation measures are there for rural and urban sources? What are the existing modeling and monitoring methods for long-term prediction of water resource quality and quantity to achieve our goals? What is the time gap needed to see the effects of implemented mitigation measures? Are natural-based solutions sufficient in reducing pollution load? Do different climatic drives influence the effects of diffuse pollution and of mitigation measures?

Model use has become more widespread due to scientific and technological developments, which today give easy access to a relatively high level of sophistication. Hydrological and water quality (WQ) models are also effective tools to predict environmental impacts and to set WQ objectives, because receiving water bodies in developing countries are often highly polluted due to combined sewer overflows, wrong connections of sewers to the drainage system, and uncontrolled industrial discharges.

Diffuse water pollution modeling, monitoring, and mitigation is acknowledged to be an important area of research worldwide; nevertheless, it has received little attention from scientists, administrators, policy makers, water resource planners, and managers. The aim of this Special Issue is (a) to focus on a selection of current challenges and research opportunities in mitigating diffuse water pollution and (b) existing and suitability of models to predict medium and long term sources of water, and (c) to encourage knowledge transfer between environmentalists and policymakers whose work concerns ecological and health risk problems.

Dr. Marina Marques da Silva Cabral Pinto
Guest Editor

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• Modeling
• Pollution sources
• Freshwater bodies
• Groundwater
• Surface water
• Water quality
• Ecological and human risk
• Eco-hydrology