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Advancing Watershed Legacy Nitrogen Modeling to Improve Global Water Quality
Citation:
Golden, H., G. Evenson, J. Christensen, AND C. Lane. Advancing Watershed Legacy Nitrogen Modeling to Improve Global Water Quality. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 57(7):2691–2697, (2023). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c06983
Impact/Purpose:
Legacy nitrogen (N) is a key explanation behind the lack of N reduction across global watersheds. Concerted efforts to integrate legacy N dynamics into watershed-scale methods that project the water quality effects of current and future land management planning methods are critical. The information produced by these efforts will afford water managers the necessary solutions and advances to quantify and communicate to the public realistic expectations of management-related water quality results. We briefly synthesize current deficiencies, or gaps, in watershed modeling – the primary approach to estimate legacy N dynamics – that require urgent attention. We do this by building upon a previous comprehensive and foundational literature review on this topic and subsequent studies. We further chart a path forward for how to fill these gaps.
Description:
Despite widespread implementation of watershed nitrogen reduction programs across the globe, nitrogen levels in many surface waters remain high. Watershed legacy nitrogen storage, i.e., the long-term retention of nitrogen in soils and groundwater, is one of several explanations for this lack of progress. However scientists and water managers are ill-equipped to estimate how legacy nitrogen moderates in-stream nitrogen responses to land conservation practices, largely because modeling tools and associated long-term monitoring approaches to answering these questions remain inadequate. We demonstrate the need for improved watershed models to simulate legacy nitrogen processes and offer modeling solutions to support long-term nitrogen-based sustainable land management across the globe.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: Advancing Watershed Legacy Nitrogen Modeling to Improve Global Water Quality
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36800391/