The role of technology and policy in mitigating regional nitrogen pollution

نویسندگان

  • Baojing Gu
  • Yimei Zhu
  • Jie Chang
  • Changhui Peng
  • Dong Liu
  • Yong Min
  • Weidong Luo
  • Robert W Howarth
  • Ying Ge
چکیده

Human activity greatly influences nitrogen (N) pollution in urbanized and adjacent areas. We comprehensively studied the N cycling in an urban–rural complex system, the Greater Hangzhou Area (GHA) in southeastern China. Our results indicated that subsurface N accumulation doubled, riverine N export tripled and atmospheric N pollutants increased 2.5 times within the GHA from 1980–2004. Agriculture was the largest N pollution source to air and water before 2000, whereas industry and human living gradually became the primary N pollution sources with the socioeconomic development. Based on the sensitivity analysis, we developed a scenario analysis to quantify the effects of technology and policy on environmental N dynamics. The fertilization reduction scenario suggested that the groundwater N pollution could decrease by 17% with less than a 5% reduction in crop production; the N effluent standard revision scenario led to a surface water N pollution reduction of 45%; the constructed wetlands implementation scenario could reduce surface water pollution by 43%–64%. Lastly, the technological improvement scenario mitigated atmospheric N pollution by 65%. Technologies play a key role in atmospheric N pollution control, policies mainly contribute to groundwater N pollution control, while technology and policy both work on surface water N mitigation within an urban–rural complex.

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تاریخ انتشار 2011