Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/C51755X/1
Diffuse nitrate pollution interception and reducing pollution swapping
Fellowship Award
- Fellow:
- Professor DS Reay, University of Edinburgh, Sch of Geosciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Edinburgh, Sch of Geosciences
- Science Area:
- Terrestrial
- Marine
- Freshwater
- Atmospheric
- Overall Classification:
- Terrestrial
- ENRIs:
- Pollution and Waste
- Natural Resource Management
- Global Change
- Science Topics:
- Soil science
- Climate & Climate Change
- Environmental Microbiology
- Water Quality
- Pollution
- Ecosystem Scale Processes
- Abstract:
- If you've ever grown plants at home you know that, along with water and light, what you need for big, healthy plants is to feed them. A key part of the food we give our plants is nitrogen. Your lawn looking yellow and thin? Give it a feed of nitrogen and chances are it will thank you. Out in our fields the farmers are all too aware that if they want a good harvest they too need to feed their crops. For them this means plant feeding on a grand scale, hundreds of kilograms of nitrogen fertiliser or manure going on to every hectare to get the maximum amount of wheat or barley in return. Unfortunately, both for the farmer, the environment, and you and me, not all of this added nitrogen fertiliser is used by the growing seedlings. Large amounts of the fertiliser are often lost from the soil via leaching and run-off of nitrogen-laden drainage waters. This contamination of our streams, rivers and oceans by nitrogen, and in particular nitrate, is a serious and growing concern right around the world. Firstly, there's our drinking water. Too much nitrate and drinking this water can reduce the ability of our blood to carry oxygen and, in the very young, cause something called 'blue baby syndrome' - a potentially fatal condition. The problems of too much nitrogen in our water don't stop with such direct health risks though. Just as on your lawn or the farmer's field the nitrogen helped the plants grow, so in our streams, rivers and estuaries the nitrogen is lapped up by microscopic plants called 'algae'. When supplied with plenty of food and light in our rivers and estuaries they can form huge blooms, toxic to fish, farm animals and even humans. In the Mississippi such blooms are now leading to so-called 'dead zones', where the death of the algae means all the oxygen in the water is used up, killing fish and other animals. So, what do we do? We need our farmers to produce more food, so we need them to use nitrogen fertilisers. However, at the moment this means worsening algal blooms, fish deaths and human health risks. The answer lies in attacking the nitrogen pollution problem on two fronts 1. Getting the farmers to better target their fertilisers, and 2. Intercepting the nitrogen that is lost from the fields. On the first battle front, farmers across large areas of Britain are already restricted as to the amount of nitrogen fertiliser they can apply and when they can do it. On the second front come the strategies aimed at intercepting any lost nitrogen, it is these, their effectiveness, down-sides and potential for improvement, that are the focus of this research. To intercept the nitrogen there are two main strategies already widely employed. At the field edges or next to streams there are buffer strips: strips of uncultivated land designed to act like sponges - bacteria in the soil mopping up the nitrate before it gets into the streams. The next line of defence comes in the form of wetlands, the polluted water that goes through them being stripped of its nitrate by more bacteria in the waterlogged soil. We know that both methods can be very effective at getting rid of the nitrate, though just how effective is something this research will establish. We also know is that the very process which gets rid of the nitrate (called denitrification) can produce large amounts of the powerful greenhouse gas 'nitrous oxide'. Just as carbon dioxide in our atmosphere causes global warming, so nitrous oxide does too, only 300 times more powerfully. Clearly, we want to avoid swapping the nitrogen pollution problem for a climate change one. It is here that this research will break new ground and provide new solutions. By using specially-made, full-scale buffer strips and denitrifying wetlands we will not only establish how good these strategies are at dealing with the nitrate pollution problem, but also how big a penalty we then pay in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions and how we can get rid of more nitrate without getting more..
- NERC Reference:
- NE/C51755X/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Postdoctoral Fellow
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Postdoctoral Fellowship
This fellowship award has a total value of £140,410
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - Staff | Total - Other Costs |
|---|---|
| £111,910 | £28,500 |
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