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Watershed-scale assessment of oil palm cultivation impact on water quality and nutrient fluxes: a case study in Sumatra (Indonesia)

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Abstract

High fertilizer input is necessary to sustain high yields in oil palm agroecosystems, but it may endanger neighboring aquatic ecosystems when excess nutrients are transported to waterways. In this study, the hydrochemical dynamics of groundwater and streams under baseflow conditions were evaluated with bi-monthly measurements for 1 year on 16 watersheds. Hydrochemical measurements were related to the spatial distribution of soil and fertilization practices across a landscape of 100 km2, dominated by oil palm cultivation, in Central Sumatra, Indonesia. The low nutrient concentrations recorded in streams throughout the landscape indicated that the mature oil palm plantations in this study did not contribute to eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems. This was ascribed to high nutrient uptake by oil palm, a rational fertilizer program, and dilution of nutrient concentrations due to heavy rainfall in the study area. Soil type controlled dissolved inorganic N and total P fluxes, with greater losses of N and P from loamy-sand uplands than loamy lowlands. Organic fertilization helped to reduce nutrient fluxes compared to mineral fertilizers. However, when K inputs exceeded the oil palm requirement threshold, high K export occurred during periods when groundwater had a short residence time. For higher nutrient use efficiency in the long term, the field-scale fertilizer management should be complemented with a landscape-scale strategy of fertilizer applications that accounts for soil variability.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Centre International de Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the PT-SMART Research Institute (SMARTRI). The authors wish to sincerely thank the staff at the SMARTRI for the support they provided over the course of this research work.

Conflict of interest

All authors disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal, or other relationships with other people or organizations within 3 years of beginning the work submitted that could inappropriately influence (bias) our work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Macdonald Campus of McGill University, 21 111 Lakeshore, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, H9X 3V9, Quebec, Canada

    Irina Comte & Joann K. Whalen

  2. CIRAD (International Cooperation Centre in Agronomic Research for Development), Avenue Agropolis, 34098, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Irina Comte

  3. Montpellier-SupAgro, UMR-LISAH (Laboratory on Interactions between Soil, Agrosystem and Hydrosystem), 2 Place Pierre Viala, F-34060, Montpellier Cedex 2, France

    François Colin

  4. IRD (Research and Development Institute), UMR-LISAH (Laboratory on Interactions between Soil, Agrosystem and Hydrosystem), 2 Place Pierre Viala, F-34060, Montpellier Cedex 2, France

    Olivier Grünberger

  5. PT SMART Research Institute (SMARTRI), Jalan Teuku Umar 19, 28112, Pekanbaru, Riau, Indonesia

    Rudi Harto Widodo & Jean-Pierre Caliman

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  1. Irina Comte
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  2. François Colin
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  3. Olivier Grünberger
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Correspondence to Irina Comte.

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Comte, I., Colin, F., Grünberger, O. et al. Watershed-scale assessment of oil palm cultivation impact on water quality and nutrient fluxes: a case study in Sumatra (Indonesia). Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 7676–7695 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4359-0

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