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Nitrogen budget in the Changjiang River drainage area

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Abstract

We established a budget model of nitrogen (N) inputs and outputs between watersheds and waterbodies to determine the sources of riverine N in the Changjiang (Yangtze) River drainage area. Nitrogen inputs in the budget included N from synthetic fertilizer, biological fixation by leguminous and other crops, wet/dry atmospheric deposition, excreta from humans and animals, and crop residues. The total N input was estimated to be 17.6 Tg, of which 20% or 3.5 Tg N was transported into waterbodies. Of the total N transported into waterbodies, the largest proportion was N from animal waste (26%), followed by N from atmospheric wet/dry deposition (25%), synthetic fertilizer N (17%), N in sewage wastes (17%), N in human waste from rural areas (6%) and industrial wastewater N (9%). We studied the spatial patterns of N inputs and outputs by dividing the Changjiang River drainage area into four sub-basins, from upstream to downstream: the Tongtian River drainage area (TTD, the headwater drainage area, 138 000 km2, less disturbed by human activities); the Jinsha River drainage area (JSD, 347 000 km2, less disturbed by human activities, approx. 3 500 km upstream of the Changjiang estuary); the Pingshan-Yichang drainage area (PYD, 520 500 km2, large-scale human disturbance, about 2 000 km upstream of the Changjiang estuary); and the Yichang-Datong drainage area (YDD, 699 900 km2, large-scale human disturbance, approx. 620 km upstream of the Changjiang estuary). The average N input into waterbodies was 2.3, 7.3, 24.1, and 28.2 kg N/ha in the TTD, JSD, PYD, and YDD sub-basins, respectively, suggesting an increase of N-components of more than 10 times from upstream to downstream areas.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Harmful Algae and Marine Biology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Tao Jiang  (江涛)

  2. Key Laboratory of Marine Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Tao Jiang  (江涛), Zhiming Yu  (俞志明), Xiuxian Song  (宋秀贤) & Xihua Cao  (曹西华)

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  1. Tao Jiang  (江涛)
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  2. Zhiming Yu  (俞志明)
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  4. Xihua Cao  (曹西华)
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Correspondence to Tao Jiang  (江涛).

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Supported by the Knowledge Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. KZCX2-YW-Q07-02), the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2010CB428706), the Fund for Creative Research Groups of NSFC (No. 41121064), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41106090)

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Jiang, T., Yu, Z., Song, X. et al. Nitrogen budget in the Changjiang River drainage area. Chin. J. Ocean. Limnol. 30, 654–667 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-012-1306-5

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