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Atmospheric Nitrogen Emission, Deposition, and Air Quality Impacts in China: an Overview

  • Air Pollution (H Zhang and Y Sun, Section Editors)
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An Erratum to this article was published on 18 April 2017

Abstract

Atmospheric reactive nitrogen (N) has induced large impacts on air pollution and ecosystem health worldwide. Atmospheric reactive N emission and deposition have largely increased in China since 1980 due to rapid agricultural, industrial, and urban development. But scientific gaps still remain in the regional and temporal variability in atmospheric N emissions and deposition. Meanwhile, the environmental impacts of N pollution and deposition are of great concern in China. This paper overviews the status of anthropogenic N emissions and deposition and their linkages to air pollution in China. The major findings include two aspects: (1) anthropogenic reactive N (e.g., NH3 and NOx) emissions contribute greatly to secondary inorganic aerosol formation and haze pollution and (2) dry N deposition is comparable in importance to wet N deposition, suggesting that both dry and wet deposition should be quantified simultaneously. Future research challenges on atmospheric N emission and deposition are discussed as well. China needs to (1) reduce the uncertainties of national emission inventory of various N species, especially organic N compounds; (2) establish national networks for atmospheric N concentration and deposition monitoring; and (3) evaluate ecological and environmental impacts of N pollution and deposition in typical ecosystems. Last but not least, N deposition modeling tools should be improved based on localized parameters and further used in future N regulation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41425007) and the State Basic Research Program (2014CB954200).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China

    Xuejun Liu, Aohan Tang & Yangyang Zhang

  2. Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China

    Wen Xu & Zhaozhong Feng

  3. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Lei Duan

  4. College of Resources Science and Technology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Enzai Du

  5. Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Yuepeng Pan

  6. South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510650, China

    Xiankai Lu

  7. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Lin Zhang

  8. Institute for Environmental and Climate Research, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Zhiyong Wu & Xuemei Wang

  9. College of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Ying Zhang

  10. Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha, Hunan, 410125, China

    Jianlin Shen

  11. Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610041, China

    Ling Song

  12. Institute of Surface-Earth System Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Xueyan Liu & Wei Song

  13. International Institute for Earth System Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Xiuying Zhang

  14. Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA

    Jeffrey L. Collett Jr

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  1. Xuejun Liu
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  2. Wen Xu
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  3. Lei Duan
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  7. Lin Zhang
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  14. Xueyan Liu
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  15. Wei Song
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  16. Aohan Tang
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  17. Yangyang Zhang
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  18. Xiuying Zhang
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  19. Jeffrey L. Collett Jr
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Correspondence to Xuejun Liu.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

All authors contributed equally to this work.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Air Pollution

An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40726-017-0056-6.

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Liu, X., Xu, W., Duan, L. et al. Atmospheric Nitrogen Emission, Deposition, and Air Quality Impacts in China: an Overview. Curr Pollution Rep 3, 65–77 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40726-017-0053-9

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