Abstract
A high proportion of the nitrogen found in lakes and rivers is present in the form of nitrate. The concentration of nitrate in many surface waters has increased over the last forty years (OECD, 1982; Roberts and Marsh, 1987; Johnes and Burt, 1993). The main source of nitrate is diffuse drainage from agricultural land (Vinten and Smith, 1993) but point sources can be important in populated areas (Jarvey et al., 1998). In 1991, the European Union introduced the Nitrates Directive (91.676) to protect waters from pollution by nitrate leached from agricultural land.
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Acknowlegements
The CLIME project was supported by contract EVK1-CT-2002-00121 from the Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development (EESD) Programme of the 5th EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. The long-term data for the English Lake District is jointly managed by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the Freshwater Biological Association. We wish to thank all our colleagues in CLIME for help in acquiring data and for permission to consult unpublished papers.
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George, G., Järvinen, M., Nõges, T., Blenckner, T., Moore, K. (2010). The Impact of the Changing Climate on the Supply and Recycling of Nitrate. In: George, G. (eds) The Impact of Climate Change on European Lakes. Aquatic Ecology Series, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2945-4_10
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