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Spatiotemporal patterns and source attribution of nitrogen pollution in a typical headwater agricultural watershed in Southeastern China

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Abstract

Excessive nitrogen (N) discharge from agriculture causes widespread problems in aquatic ecosystems. Knowledge of spatiotemporal patterns and source attribution of N pollution is critical for nutrient management programs but is poorly studied in headwaters with various small water bodies and mini-point pollution sources. Taking a typical small watershed in the low mountains of Southeastern China as an example, N pollution and source attribution were studied for a multipond system around a village using the Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF) model. The results exhibited distinctive spatio-seasonal variations with an overall seriousness rank for the three indicators: total nitrogen (TN) > nitrate/nitrite nitrogen (NOx −-N) > ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), according to the Chinese Surface Water Quality Standard. TN pollution was severe for the entire watershed, while NOx −-N pollution was significant for ponds and ditches far from the village, and the NH3-N concentrations were acceptable except for the ponds near the village in summer. Although food and cash crop production accounted for the largest source of N loads, we discovered that mini-point pollution sources, including animal feeding operations, rural residential sewage, and waste, together contributed as high as 47% of the TN and NH3-N loads in ponds and ditches. So, apart from eco-fertilizer programs and concentrated animal feeding operations, the importance of environmental awareness building for resource management is highlighted for small farmers in headwater agricultural watersheds. As a first attempt to incorporate multipond systems into the process-based modeling of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution, this work can inform other hydro-environmental studies on scattered and small water bodies. The results are also useful to water quality improvement for entire river basins.

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Acknowledgements

This study was sponsored by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2017M611938), Postdoctoral Research Funding Programs of Jiangsu Province (No. 1601038B), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41471460 and 41130750), and Science and Technology Service Network Initiative of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. KFJ-SW-STS-174). We would like to thank Meng H, Wu Q, Wang W, Yang C, Zhao K, Wu H, Wu Y, Zhang X, Zhang H, Liu X, and Li Y for their field work. We also appreciate the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. **ling Institute of Technology, 99 Hong**g Road, Nan**g, 211169, China

    Wenjun Chen

  2. Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Science, Nan**g Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Bei**g Road, Nan**g, 210008, China

    Wenjun Chen, Bin He, Weili Duan, Kaiyan Zhao & Wen Chen

  3. School of Engineering, University of California Merced, Merced, CA, USA

    Daniel Nover

  4. College of Resources and Environmental Science, Nan**g Agricultural University, Nan**g, 210095, China

    Chuan Luo

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  1. Wenjun Chen
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Correspondence to Wenjun Chen or Bin He.

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Chen, W., He, B., Nover, D. et al. Spatiotemporal patterns and source attribution of nitrogen pollution in a typical headwater agricultural watershed in Southeastern China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 2756–2773 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-0685-8

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