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The capability of estuarine sediments to remove nitrogen: implications for drinking water resource in Yangtze Estuary

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Abstract

Water in the Yangtze Estuary is fresh most of the year because of the large discharge of Yangtze River. The Qingcaosha Reservoir built on the Changxing Island in the Yangtze Estuary is an estuarine reservoir for drinking water. Denitrification rate in the top 10 cm sediment of the intertidal marshes and bare mudflat of Yangtze Estuarine islands was measured by the acetylene inhibition method. Annual denitrification rate in the top 10 cm of sediment was 23.1 μmol m−2 h−1 in marshes (ranged from 7.5 to 42.1 μmol m−2 h−1) and 15.1 μmol m−2 h−1 at the mudflat (ranged from 6.6 to 26.5 μmol m−2 h−1). Annual average denitrification rate is higher at mashes than at mudflat, but without a significant difference (p = 0.084, paired t test.). Taking into account the vegetation and water area of the reservoir, a total 1.42 × 108 g N could be converted into nitrogen gas (N2) annually by the sediment, which is 97.7 % of the dissolved inorganic nitrogen input through precipitation. Denitrification in reservoir sediment can control the bioavailable nitrogen level of the water body. At the Yangtze estuary, denitrification primarily took place in the top 4 cm of sediment, and there was no significant spatial or temporal variation of denitrification during the year at the marshes and mudflat, which led to no single factor determining the denitrification process but the combined effects of the environmental factors, hydrologic condition, and wetland vegetation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 40903049), the Science & Technology Department of Shanghai (Grant no. 11230705800), the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China and Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural development of China (Grant no. 2013ZX07310-001-04), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong province (Grant no. ZR2010DL007).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Resources and Environmental Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China

    Lin Liu, Dongqi Wang, Yangjie Li, Siqi Chang, Zhanlei Wu, Lin Yu & Zhenlou Chen

  2. School of Environment and Planning, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, Shandong, 252059, China

    Huanguang Deng

  3. Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    Yujie Hu

  4. Department of Geology and Planetary Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260-3332, USA

    Zhongjie Yu

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  1. Lin Liu
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Correspondence to Dongqi Wang.

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Liu, L., Wang, D., Deng, H. et al. The capability of estuarine sediments to remove nitrogen: implications for drinking water resource in Yangtze Estuary. Environ Sci Pollut Res 21, 10890–10899 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-2914-8

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