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Detecting Temporal Change in Watershed Nutrient Yields

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Abstract

Meta-analyses reveal that nutrient yields tend to be higher for watersheds dominated by anthropogenic uses (e.g., urban, agriculture) and lower for watersheds dominated by natural vegetation. One implication of this pattern is that loss of natural vegetation will produce increases in watershed nutrient yields. Yet, the same meta-analyses also reveal that, absent land-cover change, watershed nutrient yields vary from one year to the next due to many exogenous factors. The interacting effects of land cover and exogenous factors suggest nutrient yields should be treated as distributions, and the effect of land-cover change should be examined by looking for significant changes in the distributions. We compiled nutrient yield distributions from published data. The published data included watersheds with homogeneous land cover that typically reported two or more years of annual nutrient yields for the same watershed. These data were used to construct statistical models, and the models were used to estimate changes in the nutrient yield distributions as a result of land-cover change. Land-cover changes were derived from the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). Total nitrogen (TN) yield distributions increased significantly for 35 of 1550 watersheds and decreased significantly for 51. Total phosphorus (TP) yield distributions increased significantly for 142 watersheds and decreased significantly for 17. The amount of land-cover change required to produce significant shifts in nutrient yield distributions was not constant. Small land-cover changes led to significant shifts in nutrient yield distributions when watersheds were dominated by natural vegetation, whereas much larger land-cover changes were needed to produce significant shifts when watersheds were dominated by urban or agriculture. We discuss our results in the context of the Clean Water Act.

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Acknowledgments

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), through its Office of Research and Development (ORD), funded the research. This article has been subjected to the EPA’s peer and administrative review and has been approved for publication. Kurt Riitter’s participation was supported by the U.S. Forest Service and the Center for Landscape Pattern Analysis. The authors thank Lisa Smith, Steve Verrill, Walter Dodds, Larry Band, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous versions of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Exposure Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E243-05), Research Triangle Park, NC, 27711, USA

    James D. Wickham & Timothy G. Wade

  2. Southern Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, 3041 Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, USA

    Kurt H. Riitters

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  1. James D. Wickham
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  2. Timothy G. Wade
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  3. Kurt H. Riitters
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Correspondence to James D. Wickham.

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Wickham, J.D., Wade, T.G. & Riitters, K.H. Detecting Temporal Change in Watershed Nutrient Yields. Environmental Management 42, 223–231 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-008-9120-8

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