The UNICA team, represented by prof. Antonio Coppola, participated in the conference CMWR (Computational Methods in Water Resources), which took place in Bologna between 28 June and 2 July 2026, with an oral presentation titled “Coupled Transformation and Transport of Organic Carbon and Nutrients in Soils: A Process-Based Representation within the FLOWS Model”.
The presentation was about the FLOWS agrohydrological model (Coppola et al., 2025) and its application in real-life applications, including: irrigation management, nutrient and organic matter transformation and transport in the soil and into the water bodies, and crop growth. The governing equations for water flow and solute transport along with the main processes that can be simulated by FLOWS were presented at a single or at multiple sites. The main focal points, however, were the FLOWS model’s module on organic carbon and nutrient (nitrate, ammonium and phosphate) transformations and transport in the soil, to runoff, to artificial drainage and to groundwater.
This module is especially important for the NPP-SOL project goals.
Then, the presentation showcased FLOWS web-based graphical user interface while focusing on the part of the interface related to nutrient simulations (e.g., the fertilizer types, application times, amounts and the parameters required for the simulation).
The final part of the presentation focused on real-world applications of the model, such as simulating water and nutrient flows into runoff in a hydraulically reclaimed area in Arborea area on the west coast of Sardinia Island, Italy, and coupling FLOWS model with another model, named KWV, that simulates the fate of this runoff water and nutrients into a surface drainage water network (Coppola et al., 2024). Other examples included the use of FLOWS model to optimize irrigation water at a large district scale in Apulia region, Southeast Italy (Hassan et al., 2024).
The presentation received positive feedback from the audience who showed a lot of interest in the model and its calculation of organic matter and nutrient processes.
References:
- Coppola, A., Hassan, S. B. M., Pili, F. (2025). FLOWS – FLOw of Water and Solutes in agricultural and environmental systems (WEB Version 1.0) | Zenodo.
- Coppola, A., Zucaro, R., Baralla, S., Satta, M., Ruberto, M., Comegna, A., Dragonetti, G. and Hassan, S. (2024), Monitoring and Modelling Fluxes of Water and Nutrients to Surface Drainage Network from Irrigated Agricultural Fields in a Hydraulically Reclaimed Coastal Area. Ecohydrol. 17: e2723.
- Hassan, S.B.M., Dragonetti, G., Comegna, A. et al. (2024). Analyzing the role of soil and vegetation spatial variability in modelling hydrological processes for irrigation optimization at large scale. Irrig. Sci. 42, 249–267.
