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Net anthropogenic nitrogen input to Huaihe River Basin, China during 1990-2010.

ZHANG Wang-shou1,2, SU Jing-jun1, DU Xin-zhong1,2, LI Xu-yong1   

  1. (1State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for EcoEnvironmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China; 2University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China)
  • Online:2015-06-18 Published:2015-06-18

Abstract: Social economy in Huaihe River Basin had undergone enormous changes during 1990-2010. The grain yield had increased by 58%, from 64.14 million tons to 101.21 million tons, and the urbanization rate had increased by 22%, from 13% to 35%. Assessing the negative impacts of these high intensive human activities caused by rapid social development on terrestrial ecosystem would serve as a scientific basis for quantitative management of regional ecology. This paper estimated the spatial and temporal distribution of net anthropogenic nitrogen input (NANI) in Huaihe River Basin during 1990-2010. The results showed that there was an increasing trend in NANI in the period of 1990-2001, and after that this trend was slower. The NANI increased from approximately 17232 kg N·km-2·a-1 in 1990 to a peak of 28771 kg N·km-2·a-1 in 2003, and then declined to 26415 kg N·km-2·a-1 in 2010. Chemical fertilizer and atmospheric deposition were the largest two sources of NANI, followed by food & feed import and biological nitrogen. Contributions from both chemical fertilizer and atmospheric deposition had been increasing continuously, respectively from 64% and 16% in 1990 to 77% and 19%. Our findings implied that the shift from fertilizersupported agriculture and fossil fuelsupported industry to scitech lead economic development is urgently needed.