Journal article
Modeling Catchment-Scale Nitrogen Losses Across a Land-Use Gradient in the Subtropics
Frontiers in Earth Science, Vol.8
2020
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Abstract
© Copyright © 2020 Hajati, White, Moosdorf and Santos. Changing land use in subtropical and tropical catchments to farmland can result in higher nitrogen (N) loss to aquatic ecosystems. Here, we developed a lumped water and N balance model to estimate regional N losses to creeks at catchment scale within understudied subtropical catchments in Australia. The conceptual water balance model CoCa-RFSGD was extended by the nitrogen mass balance in top and subsoil by adding nitrogen cycle transformation estimates depending on meteorological, soil, and land-use properties. The model estimates the impact of pristine and agricultural land use on catchment-wide water quality using only low-order creek samples as water quality measurements of nitrate and nitrite (NOx) with increased model performance with increased agricultural coverage. The model revealed that an agricultural proportion of 3% in the study site drove a 3.5-fold increase of N losses to creeks and a 6.7-fold increase of N losses to the atmosphere compared to catchments without agriculture. Agricultural land use lost 92 kg-N ha−1, 85% of which evaded to the atmosphere and 15% was discharged via surface waters. A change from forest to cleared land may increase the total denitrification potential of a catchment. Overall, our lumped model provides a simple but effective tool to upscale local aquatic water quality measurements to the catchment scale, allowing for assessment of changing land use on aquatic N loads in areas with limited data availability.
Details
- Title
- Modeling Catchment-Scale Nitrogen Losses Across a Land-Use Gradient in the Subtropics
- Creators
- Mithra Christin Hajati (Author) - Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine ResearchShane White (Author) - Southern Cross UniversityNils Moosdorf (Author) - Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine ResearchIsaac R Santos (Author) - Southern Cross University
- Publication Details
- Frontiers in Earth Science, Vol.8
- Publisher
- Frontiers Research Foundation
- Identifiers
- 991012926967302368
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2020 Hajati, White, Moosdorf and Santos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Science and Engineering; National Marine Science Centre
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article