Temporal scaling of long-term co-occurring agricultural contaminants and the implications for conservation planning

Xiuyu Liang; Keith E. Schilling; Christopher S. Jones; You-Kuan Zhang

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac19dd

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Temporal scaling of long-term co-occurring agricultural contaminants and the implications for conservation planning

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Temporal scaling of long-term co-occurring agricultural contaminants and the implications for conservation planning

Xiuyu Liang, Keith E. Schilling, Christopher S. Jones and You-Kuan Zhang

Environmental research letters, Vol.16(9), p.94015

09/01/2021

DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac19dd

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Abstract

Stemming the export of agricultural contaminants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment, and bacteria in rivers is needed to improve water quality in agricultural regions. However, patterns and trends of these co-occurring agricultural contaminants are relatively unexplored owing to the lack of long-term and high-frequency data sets needed to capture their fluctuations over different time scales. Using a dataset measured at the Raccoon River in west-central Iowa for more than 17 years, spectral analyses were used to characterize the variability and temporal scaling of co-occurring nutrients, sediment, and bacteria in long-term monitoring data in a water-supply river draining a highly agricultural watershed. Results showed that scaling exponents of pollutant concentrations gradually increased from bacteria (0.27) to sediment (0.64), chloride (1.02), orthophosphate (0.75), and nitrate (1.73). The smaller scaling exponents of bacteria and sediment indicate transport primarily by surface water runoff whereas the larger exponents of nutrients indicate transport by groundwater and subsurface tile drainage. Nitrate export exhibits a chemostatic behavior whereas the other constituents deviate from the chemostatic behavior, indicating that the agricultural watershed has a large reservoir of nitrogen relative to the other pollutants. The results are seen to provide guidance for implementation of conservation practices in agricultural watersheds by helping watershed managers more correctly match the appropriate practice to the dominant hydrologic transport pathway.

Environmental Sciences

Environmental Sciences & Ecology

Life Sciences & Biomedicine

Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences

Physical Sciences

Science & Technology

Details

Title: Subtitle: Temporal scaling of long-term co-occurring agricultural contaminants and the implications for conservation planning
Creators: Xiuyu Liang - Southern University of Science and Technology
Keith E. Schilling - Iowa Geological Survey, University of Iowa, 300 Trowbridge Hall, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242, UNITED STATES
Christopher S. Jones - University of Iowa
You-Kuan Zhang - Southern University of Science and Technology
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Environmental research letters, Vol.16(9), p.94015
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac19dd
ISSN: 1748-9326
eISSN: 1748-9326
Publisher: IOP Publishing Ltd
Number of pages: 11
Grant note: Shenzhen Municipal Engineering Lab of Environmental IoT Technologies State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Integrated Surface Water-Groundwater Pollution Control 2017B030301012 / Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Soil and Groundwater Pollution Control Iowa Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University 41977165 / National Natural Science Foundation of China; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)
Language: English
Date published: 09/01/2021
Academic Unit: Earth and Environmental Sciences; IIHR--Hydroscience and Engineering
Record Identifier: 9984383891702771

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