Advancing Watershed Legacy Nitrogen Modeling to Improve Global Water Quality

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 prog...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental science & technology 2023-02, Vol.57 (7), p.2691-2697
Main Authors: Golden, Heather E., Evenson, Grey R., Christensen, Jay R., Lane, Charles R.
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:0013-936X
1520-5851