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A national assessment of the effect of intensive agro-land use practices on nonpoint source pollution using emission scenarios and geo-spatial data

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Abstract

China’s intensive agriculture has led to a broad range of adverse impacts upon ecosystems and thereby caused environmental quality degradation. One of the fundamental problems that face land managers when dealing with agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution is to quantitatively assess the NPS pollution loads from different sources at a national scale. In this study, export scenarios and geo-spatial data were used to calculate the agricultural NPS pollution loads of nutrient, pesticide, plastic film residue, and crop straw burning in China. The results provided the comprehensive and baseline knowledge of agricultural NPS pollution from China’s arable farming system in 2014. First, the nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) emission loads to water environment were estimated to be 1.44 Tg N and 0.06 Tg P, respectively. East and south China showed the highest load intensities of nutrient release to aquatic system. Second, the amount of pesticide loss to water of seven pesticides that are widely used in China was estimated to be 30.04 tons (active ingredient (ai)). Acetochlor was the major source of pesticide loss to water, contributing 77.65% to the total loss. The environmental impacts of pesticide usage in east and south China were higher than other parts. Third, 19.75% of the plastic film application resided in arable soils. It contributed a lot to soil phthalate ester (PAE) contamination. Fourth, 14.11% of straw produce were burnt in situ, most occurring in May to July (post-winter wheat harvest) in North China Plain and October to November (post-rice harvest days) in southeast China. All the above agricultural NPS pollution loadings were unevenly distributed across China. The spatial correlations between pollution loads at land unit scale were also estimated. Rising labor cost in rural China might be a possible explanation for the general positive correlations of the NPS pollution loads. It also indicated a co-occurred higher NPS pollution loads and a higher human exposure risk in eastern regions. Results from this research might provide full-scale information on the status and spatial variation of various agricultural NPS pollution loads for policy makers to control the NPS pollution in China.

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Funding information

We thank financial support for this work from the National Science Foundation of China (No. 41130526).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Land Resources Management, College of Resource and Environmental Science, China Agricultural University, No.2 Yuanmingyuan West Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100193, People’s Republic of China

    Dong Zhuo, Liming Liu, Huirong Yu & Chengcheng Yuan

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  1. Dong Zhuo
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  2. Liming Liu
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  3. Huirong Yu
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  4. Chengcheng Yuan
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Correspondence to Liming Liu.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

Appendix

Appendix

Table 2 Representative N/P runoff or leaching emission scenarios of arable land in China
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Table 3 Representative pesticide runoff or leaching emission scenarios of arable land in China
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Table 4 Representative agricultural film mulching and residual scenarios of arable land in China
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Table 5 In situ burned straw residue of in situ burning scenarios across China
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Table 6 Share of straw produce burned in situ in each province or city across China
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Fig. 7
figure 7

Spatial variation of monthly straw waste open burning areas across China in 2012. Data source: Global Fire Emission Database (GFED4s, van der Werf et al. 2010)

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Zhuo, D., Liu, L., Yu, H. et al. A national assessment of the effect of intensive agro-land use practices on nonpoint source pollution using emission scenarios and geo-spatial data. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 1683–1705 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-0118-8

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