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Since the mid-19th century, the rise of industrial agriculture and growing population has significantly altered nutrient cycling. These changes are from multiple sources, such as chemical fertilizers, livestock waste, and human waste. Excess nutrients have led to a suite of water quality problems that damage human and animal health, ecology, and economics. In this thesis, I begin to quantify the "Nutrient Landscape", a term I use to refer to the set of processes and properties that drive cycling of nitrogen and phosphorus throughout our modern environment.To understand the "Nutrient Landscape", I first develop algorithms utilizing broadly available data to estimate nutrient inputs from seven distinct sources across the U.S. portion of the Laurentian Great Lakes Basin at 30 meter resolution. Chapter I's mapping effort, referred to as the Spatially Explicit Nutrient Source Estimate map (SENSEmap), provides new information for management and modeling, as well as a classification system to categorize watersheds based on their nutrient source composition. Second, I examine the groundwater component of the "Nutrient Landscape" by exploring a dataset of over 300,000 nitrate samples from drinking water wells using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis to determine drivers of elevated concentration. This analysis revealed high nitrate concentrations result from a combination of hazardous land use and vulnerable geology. The data products and findings in this thesis provide a quantitative framework for informing management strategies and driving the next generation of nutrient modeling.
The Great Lakes and the streams draining to them provide an abundance of ecosystem services, including habitat, water resources, and recreational opportunities. The success and wellbeing of these water bodies are impacted by a variety of factors, including invasive species and septic systems. Along the shoreline of the Great Lakes, invasive species, such as Phragmites and Typha, are a major concern to the coastal wetlands. Within the inland river systems, near-shore septic systems can create elevated levels of nutrients that can have a collection of negative impacts. Both of these threats ultimately relate back to the presence and application of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. We first address the landscape conditions that allow for coastal wetland invasion. Using machine learning algorithms, we were able to quantify relationships between the presence of invasive species in coastland wetlands, and a variety of landscape scale variables - primarily the nutrient loads of nitrogen and phosphorus. We determined that high invasion is most strongly associated with nitrogen loading above 118 kg/ha/yr within the watersheds derived from the invaded wetlands. We then address how septic systems could be contributing to nutrient loads within the Manistee and Au Sable Rivers of Michigan. We modeled groundwater flow and the transport of nutrients to assess how competently septic systems are retaining nutrients. On average, septic systems allow 88% of introduced nitrogen, and 49% of phosphorus, to enter groundwater. These findings will inform watershed management and provide a better understanding of the effectiveness of septic systems.
Water quality in many regions of the Great Lakes Basin (GLB) has deteriorated due to numerous anthropogenic drivers, including increases in agricultural area, increased fertilizer use, intensive livestock production, and increases in human population densities. Excessive nutrient inputs from both point and non-point sources have accelerated eutrophication in inland watersheds and in receiving water bodies, and policy goals have recently been set to reduce phosphorus loading to Lake Erie by as much as 40%. Under such pressures, it is crucial to better our understanding of nutrient transport across the GLB and to identify key watershed drivers of both seasonal and annual nutrient loading from watersheds to the lakes. In this research study, I have utilized numerous metrics to characterize nutrient dynamics in Great Lakes Watersheds across a gradient of human impacts and have attempted to identify key controls on biogeochemical signatures. As a part of this work, I paired water quality data from over 200 Great Lakes watersheds with land use and climate data to identify dominant controls on stream nutrient concentrations at the annual, seasonal, and event scales. At the annual scale, standardized regression analysis identified significant relationships between flow-weighted concentration (FWCs) and selected catchment characteristics. FWCs were found to be strongly linked to land-use variables such as combined agricultural and urban land, wetlands and tile drainage. Our quantification of these relationships was used to create spatial maps of annual nutrient concentrations and loads and to identify nutrient hotspots across the GLB. Specifically, high nutrient concentrations and export were observed in the Maumee and Sydenham River catchments, whereas lower concentrations and loads were found in Lake Superior catchments. At the seasonal scale, three primary seasonal nutrient regimes were identified: (1) 'in-phase' (positive correlation between monthly concentrations and discharge), (2) 'out-of-phase' (negative correlation), and (3) 'stationary' (no significant relationship). While in-phase seasonality was found to be the most common concentration regime for watersheds with higher levels of agricultural land use, nitrate seasonality in particular was found to be muted in watersheds with the highest agricultural land use, but to be more extreme in watersheds with less agriculture but higher amounts of forested area and higher wetland densities. Out-of-phase seasonality was found to be significantly associated with higher population densities and higher percent urban areas. At the event-scale, concentrations were found to be more variable with discharge for phosphorus than for nitrate. Additionally, Lake Erie showed significantly lower concentration variability in relation to discharge compared to all the other Lakes. As the Lake Erie basin also has higher agricultural land use than the other lakes, the more chemostatic concentration dynamics in these watersheds appears to be linked to agricultural nutrient use and suggests that agricultural nutrient legacies may be an important driver of current patterns in nutrient delivery to the lakes.
The environmental and economic importance of monitoring forests and agricultural resources has allowed remote sensing to be increasingly in the development of products and services responding to user needs.This volume presents the main applications in remote sensing for agriculture and forestry, including the primary soil properties, the estimation of the vegetation’s biophysical variables, methods for mapping land cover, the contribution of remote sensing for crop and water monitoring, and the estimation of the forest cover properties (cover dynamic, height, biomass).This book, part of a set of six volumes, has been produced by scientists who are internationally renowned in their fields. It is addressed to students (engineers, Masters, PhD), engineers and scientists, specialists in remote sensing applied to agriculture and forestry.Through this pedagogical work, the authors contribute to breaking down the barriers that hinder the use of radar imaging techniques. Provides clear and concise descriptions of modern remote sensing methods Explores the most current remote sensing techniques with physical aspects of the measurement (theory) and their applications Provides chapters on physical principles, measurement, and data processing for each technique described Describes optical remote sensing technology, including a description of acquisition systems and measurement corrections to be made
Environmental problems in coastal ecosystems can sometimes be attributed to excess nutrients flowing from upstream watersheds into estuarine settings. This nutrient over-enrichment can result in toxic algal blooms, shellfish poisoning, coral reef destruction, and other harmful outcomes. All U.S. coasts show signs of nutrient over-enrichment, and scientists predict worsening problems in the years ahead. Clean Coastal Waters explains technical aspects of nutrient over-enrichment and proposes both immediate local action by coastal managers and a longer-term national strategy incorporating policy design, classification of affected sites, law and regulation, coordination, and communication. Highlighting the Gulf of Mexico's "Dead Zone," the Pfiesteria outbreak in a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, and other cases, the book explains how nutrients work in the environment, why nitrogen is important, how enrichment turns into over-enrichment, and why some environments are especially susceptible. Economic as well as ecological impacts are examined. In addressing abatement strategies, the committee discusses the importance of monitoring sites, developing useful models of over-enrichment, and setting water quality goals. The book also reviews voluntary programs, mandatory controls, tax incentives, and other policy options for reducing the flow of nutrients from agricultural operations and other sources.