Chinese coastal seas are facing heavy atmospheric nitrogen deposition

X.S. Luo, A.H. Tang, K. Shi, L.H. Wu, W.Q. Li, W.Q. Shi, X.K. Shi, J. W. Erisman, F.S. Zhang, X.J. Liu. 2014. Chinese coastal seas are facing heavy atmospheric nitrogen deposition. Environmental Research Letters. 9. 9
Pagina's / pages: 10
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Taal/language: Engels
Abstract / summary in English:

As the amount of reactive nitrogen (N) generated and emitted increases the amount of N deposition and its contribution to eutrophication or harmful algal blooms in the coastal zones are becoming issues of environmental concern. To quantify N deposition in coastal seas of China we selected six typical coastal sites from North to South in 2011. Concentrations of NH3, HNO3, NO2, particulate NH4+ (pNH4+) and pNO3 ranged from 1.97– 4.88, 0.46 –1.22, 3.03 –7.09,2.24 – 4.90 and 1.13–2.63 μgNm−3 at Dalian (DL), Changdao (CD), Linshandao (LS), Fenghua (FH), Fuzhou (FZ), and Zhanjiang (ZJ) sites, respectively. Volume-weighted NO3–N and NH4+–N concentrations in precipitation varied from 0.46 to 1.67 and 0.47 to 1.31 mg N L−1 at the six sites. Dry, wet and total deposition rates of N were 7.8–23.1, 14.2–25.2 and 22.0 – 44.6 kg N ha−1 yr−1 across the six coastal sites. Average N dry deposition accounted for 45.4% of the total deposition and NH3 and pNH4 + contributed to 76.6% of the dry deposition. If we extrapolate our total N deposition of 33.9 kg N ha−1 yr−1 to the whole Chinese coastal sea area (0.40 million km2), total N deposition amounts to 1.36 Tg N yr−1, a large external N input to surrounding marine ecosystems.

Keywords in English: reactive N, atmospheric deposition, coastal sea, eutrophication, China