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Causes, Assessment, and Treatment of Nutrient (N and P) Pollution in Rivers, Estuaries, and Coastal Waters

  • Sediment Pollution (P Zhang, Section Editor)
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Abstract

As a consequence of industrialization, urbanization, and population growth in the past decades, high nutrient concentrations from point and non-point sources in aquatic systems have caused major problems to the water quality in rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters. Although the nutrient pollution due to land use change cannot be ignored, the combined sewer overflows and discharging sites have been important point sources of nutrient pollution. Integrated hydrodynamic, chemical, and biological models developed in recent years, which simulate the nutrient transportation from both point and non-point sources, are useful tools to assist in identifying the transport and fate of nutrients from both point and non-point sources. In this paper, water quality data from published literature were reviewed and analyzed to evaluate nutrient (N and P) pollution in aquatic systems. An integrated monitoring and management plan should be continuously developed in the future to monitor and regulate nutrient discharges from point and non-point sources.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Pengfei Zhang, Section Editor of Current Pollution Reports, Ms. Lauren Greaves, Associate Editor of Current Pollution Reports, and two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions have improved the quality of an early version of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported in part by Montclair State University’s Graduate Assistantship (JN), Montclair State University’s Faculty Scholarship Program (HF), and the State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research Open Research Fund (SKLEC-KF201607).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environmental Studies, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, 07043, USA

    Jing Nie & Huan Feng

  2. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Trenton, NJ, 08625, USA

    Benjamin B. Witherell & Marzooq Alebus

  3. Department of Technology and Society, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA

    Manoj D. Mahajan

  4. State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, People’s Republic of China

    Weiguo Zhang & Lizhong Yu

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  1. Jing Nie
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  2. Huan Feng
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  3. Benjamin B. Witherell
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Correspondence to Huan Feng.

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Nie, J., Feng, H., Witherell, B.B. et al. Causes, Assessment, and Treatment of Nutrient (N and P) Pollution in Rivers, Estuaries, and Coastal Waters. Curr Pollution Rep 4, 154–161 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40726-018-0083-y

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