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Stochastic sensitivity analysis of nitrogen pollution to climate change in a river basin with complex pollution sources

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Abstract

It is increasingly recognized that climate change could impose both direct and indirect impacts on the quality of the water environment. Previous studies have mostly concentrated on evaluating the impacts of climate change on non-point source pollution in agricultural watersheds. Few studies have assessed the impacts of climate change on the water quality of river basins with complex point and non-point pollution sources. In view of the gap, this paper aims to establish a framework for stochastic assessment of the sensitivity of water quality to future climate change in a river basin with complex pollution sources. A sub-daily soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) model was developed to simulate the discharge, transport, and transformation of nitrogen from multiple point and non-point pollution sources in the upper Huai River basin of China. A weather generator was used to produce 50 years of synthetic daily weather data series for all 25 combinations of precipitation (changes by − 10, 0, 10, 20, and 30%) and temperature change (increases by 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 °C) scenarios. The generated daily rainfall series was disaggregated into the hourly scale and then used to drive the sub-daily SWAT model to simulate the nitrogen cycle under different climate change scenarios. Our results in the study region have indicated that (1) both total nitrogen (TN) loads and concentrations are insensitive to temperature change; (2) TN loads are highly sensitive to precipitation change, while TN concentrations are moderately sensitive; (3) the impacts of climate change on TN concentrations are more spatiotemporally variable than its impacts on TN loads; and (4) wide distributions of TN loads and TN concentrations under individual climate change scenario illustrate the important role of climatic variability in affecting water quality conditions. In summary, the large variability in SWAT simulation results within and between each climate change scenario highlights the uncertainty of the impacts of climate change and the need to incorporate extreme conditions in managing water environment and developing climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering (2016490411), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFA0601501), Chinese Natural Science Foundation (41201191), and Chinese National Engineering Laboratory for Circular Economy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science & Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Xiaoying Yang & Lit Tan

  2. State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute, Nanjing, 210029, China

    Ruimin He & Guoqing Wang

  3. Centre for Water Systems, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QF, UK

    Guangtao Fu

  4. Anhui Province Meteorological Observatory, Hefei, 230001, China

    Jinyin Ye

  5. Zhumadian City Bureau of Environmental Protection, Zhumadian, 463000, China

    Qun Liu

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  1. Xiaoying Yang
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  2. Lit Tan
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  4. Guangtao Fu
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Correspondence to Xiaoying Yang or Guoqing Wang.

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Responsible editor: Boqiang Qin

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Yang, X., Tan, L., He, R. et al. Stochastic sensitivity analysis of nitrogen pollution to climate change in a river basin with complex pollution sources. Environ Sci Pollut Res 24, 26545–26561 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-0257-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-0257-y

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