Download Free Biogeochemical Cycling Of Phosphorus In The Chesapeake Bay And Its Watershed Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Biogeochemical Cycling Of Phosphorus In The Chesapeake Bay And Its Watershed and write the review.

The Chesapeake Bay and its watershed suffer from varying degrees of water quality issues fueled by both point and non--point nutrient sources. Methodological limitations on source tracking and identification of the specific phosphorus (P) pools that can be biologically cycled (or remain recalcitrant) in both the short and long terms are the major obstacles preventing accurate assessment of the nutrient loads that could impact water quality. This research utilized phosphate oxygen isotope ratios, mineralogical (XRD and micro-XRD), microscopic (SEM), elemental, and spectroscopic (31P NMR and 57Fe Mössbauer) methods to characterize P speciation and investigate mechanisms and pathways of P transformations in the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. In an agricultural soil, short-term transformation of externally applied P to a less or non-bioavailable P pool was tracked by using 18O labeled phosphate. This enabled identification of sources and precipitation pathways of acid extractable P pools. In East Creek, a tidal tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, impact of P loading primarily from agricultural runoff was reflected on the pathways and intensity of P cycling: both input flux higher than microbial cycling and remineralization (degradation of organic P) contributed to higher pore water Pi in the headwater region. In the wetland region, on the other hand, porewater Pi was completed cycled. In the Chesapeake Bay sediments, ferric Fe-bound and authigenic P pools were the two major P sinks, regardless of bottom water hypoxia. Regeneration of Pi from organic matter degradation was found to be the predominant, if not sole, pathway for authigenic P precipitation. Overall, this work generated new insights into the sources, stability, and transformations of various P pools in soils, waters, and sediments under different biogeochemical conditions. These findings are expected to be useful to watershed nutrient management plans as well as to widen source- and pathway- based research in the Chesapeake Bay and other watersheds.
Using the Chesapeake Bay as a case study, Agriculture and Phosphorus Management discusses the impact and management of phosphorus in watersheds. Although urban and other sources contribute phosphorus to the Bay, the papers presented focus on how its role in agriculture impacts water quality. They review the new guidelines and legislation slated for implementation by 2002 directed towards sustainable nutrient management and strategies for implementing them. Phosphorus, an essential element for plant and animal growth, has long been recognized as necessary to eliminate deficiencies and to maintain profitable crop and livestock production. It can increase the biological productivity of surface waters by accelerating eutrophication. Human activities accelerate the rate of eutrophication - principally by increasing the rate at which phosphorus enters the aquatic system. Written by experts from a range of disciplines Agriculture and Phosphorus Management provides a deeper understanding of the diverse, dynamic, and complex factors controlling the impact of agricultural phosphorus management on production and water quality. Each contributor addresses the questions: what do we know, what do we still need to know, where are the major gaps in our knowledge, and how does the information relate to phosphorus management strategies in the Bay Watershed, and other watersheds? As a result this series of papers provides a unique collection of information of regional, national, and international significance and gives prioritized phosphorus management options for not only the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, but for watersheds around the world.
Spatially Referenced Regression on Watershed Attributes (SPARROW) was used to provide empirical estimates of the sources, fate, and transport of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and the mean annual TN and TP flux to the bay and in each of 80,579 nontidal tributary stream reaches. Restoration efforts in recent decades have been insufficient to meet established standards for water quality and ecological conditions in Chesapeake Bay. The bay watershed includes 166,000 square kilometers of mixed land uses, multiple nutrient sources, and variable hydrogeologic, soil, and weather conditions, and bay restoration is complicated by the multitude of nutrient sources and complex interacting factors affecting the occurrence, fate, and transport of nitrogen and phosphorus from source areas to streams and the estuary. Effective and efficient nutrient management at the regional scale in support of Chesapeake Bay restoration requires a comprehensive understanding of the sources, fate, and transport of nitrogen and phosphorus in the watershed, which is only available through regional models. The current models, Chesapeake Bay nutrient SPARROW models, version 4 (CBTN_v4 and CBTP_v4), were constructed at a finer spatial resolution than previous SPARROW models for the Chesapeake Bay watershed (versions 1, 2, and 3), and include an updated timeframe and modified sources and other explantory terms.
Phosphorus is one of the major nutrients limiting the productivity of terrestrial, wetland and aquatic ecosystems. Over the last decade several research projects were conducted on Florida's ecosystems from state and federal agencies and private industry to address water quality issues, and to develop management practices to control nutrient loads. Phosphorus Biogeochemistry in Sub-Tropical Ecosystems is the first thorough study of the role of phosphorus in ecological health and water quality ever published. Because of its vast and extensively studied ecosystems, Florida has often served as a national laboratory on current and future trends in ecosystem management. The reader will find studies at all levels of biological organization, from the cellular to entire ecological communities. The book is a definitive study of the role and behavior of phosphorus deposition in the upland/wetland/aquatic environment. The papers presented in this book are organized in specific groups: ecological analysis and global issues, biogeochemical transformations, biogeochemical responses, transport processes, phosphorus management, and synthesis. Although Florida's ecosystems are used as a case study, the results presented have global applications.
The Chesapeake Bay watershed is home to over 18 million people and contains over 87,000 working farms, which are two aspects that have led to the Bay's long-standing impaired status. In response to the federal mandate to reduce pollutant loadings to the Bay and to meet its portion of the watershed-wide load reduction goals, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has divided its counties into four prioritization tiers based on potential pollutant reduction. Twenty watersheds within the Susquehanna and Potomac portions of the Chesapeake Bay were selected from among the tiers to compare watersheds with varying levels of documented agriculturally-focused best management practice (BMP) implementation to those dominated by forested land cover. Although spatial targeting of BMPs has been extensively studied for reducing nutrient and sediment loads from agriculturally-dominated landscapes of the Bay watershed, effectiveness of BMP implementation to restore natural biogeochemical variability to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles remains unknown. Furthermore, the time frame between widescale BMP implementation and watershed recovery at the county level is a complex subject which requires more assessment. Both these research inquiries could affect policy decisions, as available funding constraints often force BMPs to be implemented where they will be most effective. Research results could help land managers and policymakers assess the effectiveness of BMP implementation for achieving load reduction goals, as well as provide a better understanding of their effectiveness not only in reducing loads, but in restoring variability to nutrient cycling. This research investigated the hydrologic, biogeochemical, anthropogenic, and physiographic factors that influence the degree of temporal inequality exhibited by nutrient time series data in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Temporal inequality was assessed via Lorenz inequality curves and their corresponding Gini equations, as well as testing and comparing the concentration-discharge relationships of TN and TP, within twenty targeted watersheds within the Susquehanna and Potomac portions of the Chesapeake Bay. Spatial analysis was additionally conducted to analyze the relationship between Gini values, nutrient reduction progress, forested and agricultural land use percentages, coefficients of variation, and b values. Specifically, this thesis examined how the implementation of BMPs affects the degree of temporal inequality exhibited by nutrient transport at individual gauging stations over time and how quickly improvements are reflected within flow and load data. The watersheds of interest were selected using tier ranking from Phase III of the Pennsylvania Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP). The goal of this thesis was to compare watersheds with varying levels of documented BMP implementation to those with largely forested land cover in order to assess comparisons in degrees of temporal inequality of flow and nutrient load, as well as whether BMPs restore variability to nutrient dynamics within the studied timeframe. Hydroclimic variables were also scrutinized based on how they affect Gini Coefficients for nutrient loads. The hypothesis that drove this research was that agriculturally-dominated watersheds would show less variability of nutrient concentrations observed in streams due to nutrient legacy sources and current-day TN and TP sources, while less impacted watersheds would exhibit higher variability. I anticipated that if BMPs have helped to restore the natural variability of nutrient concentrations, then the degree of temporal inequality exhibited by a given gauging station location will increase over time after the BMPs have been implemented. However, due to the different pathways TN and TP pollution take in the environment, I anticipated TP to respond faster to BMP implementation than TN. Results drawn after data analysis indicate that there were few significant data markers of the improvement in TN variability, even after looking at both time series data and spatial analysis. Though this was the expected result for watershed sub-catchments with a higher percentage of agricultural land-use, this persisted even in more forested sub-catchments. No sub-catchment investigated in this thesis had a CVTN:CVQ value above 0.3 by the end of the data series, which highlights how difficult it is to restore TN variability in a landscape. Ultimately, I concluded that noticeable trend changes in TN variability may not be detectible only eight years after the TMDL model was implemented. Conversely, I concluded that there were visible signs that indicated several sub-watersheds within the scope of this research that displayed improving variability patterns for TP. The Gini coefficients of TP were overall more responsive to change than TN, particularly when looking at tier 1 and 2 sub-catchments. This is likely due to a combination of more progress completed towards TP reductions via infrastructure implementation (BMPs) and the different pathways TN and TP pollution take in the environment. A discussion of the implications and limitations of using the Weighted Regression on Time, Discharge, and Season (WRTDS) method to analyze long-term surface water-quality data is included at the end of this thesis.