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Where did all the nitrogen go? Fate of nitrogen inputs to large watersheds in the northeastern U.S.A.

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Abstract

To assess the fate of the large amounts of nitrogen (N) brought into the environment by human activities, we constructed N budgets for sixteen large watersheds (475 to 70,189 km2) in the northeastern U.S.A. These watersheds are mainly forested (48–87%), but vary widely with respect to land use and population density. We combined published data and empirical and process models to set up a complete N budget for these sixteen watersheds. Atmospheric deposition, fertilizer application, net feed and food inputs, biological fixation, river discharge, wood accumulation and export, changes in soil N, and denitrification losses in the landscape and in rivers were considered for the period 1988 to 1992. For the whole area, on average 3420 kg of N is imported annually per km2 of land. Atmospheric N deposition, N2 fixation by plants, and N imported in commercial products (fertilizers, food and feed) contributed to the input in roughly equal contributions. We quantified the fate of these inputs by independent estimates of storage and loss terms, except for denitrification from land, which was estimated from the difference between all inputs and all other storage and loss terms. Of the total storage and losses in the watersheds, about half of the N is lost in gaseous form (51%, largely by denitrification). Additional N is lost in riverine export (20%), in food exports (6%), and in wood exports (5%). Change in storage of N in the watersheds in soil organic matter (9%) and wood (9%) accounts for the remainder of the sinks. The presence of appreciable changes in total N storage on land, which we probably under-rather than overestimated, shows that the N budget is not in steady state, so that drainage and denitrification exports of N may well increase further in the future.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Soil Science & Geology and Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research, Wageningen University, POB 37, 6700 AA, Wageningen, the

    N van Breemen

  2. College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York, Syracuse, NY

    E.W. Boyer

  3. Department of Plant Biology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, CA

    C.L. Goodale

  4. US EPA, Wakefield, RI

    N.A. Jaworski (Retired)

  5. Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

    K. Paustian

  6. Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

    S.P. Seitzinger & M. Eve

  7. Department of Botany & Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

    K. Lajtha

  8. Department of Geology & Geophysics, University of Calgary, Canada

    B. Mayer

  9. Laboratory of Soil Science & Geology and Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research, Wageningen University, POB 37, 6700 AA, Wageningen, the, Netherlands

    D. van Dam

  10. Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

    R.W. Howarth

  11. Marine Biological Laboratory, The Ecosystems Center, Woods Hole, MA

    K.J. Nadelhoffer

  12. Free University of Brussels, Belgium

    G. Billen

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  1. N van Breemen
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  2. E.W. Boyer
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  3. C.L. Goodale
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  4. N.A. Jaworski
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  6. S.P. Seitzinger
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  7. K. Lajtha
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  8. B. Mayer
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  9. D. van Dam
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  10. R.W. Howarth
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  11. K.J. Nadelhoffer
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  12. M. Eve
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  13. G. Billen
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Correspondence to N van Breemen.

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van Breemen, N., Boyer, E., Goodale, C. et al. Where did all the nitrogen go? Fate of nitrogen inputs to large watersheds in the northeastern U.S.A.. Biogeochemistry 57, 267–293 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015775225913

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