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Spatial Influences on Rates of Denitrification in Floridan Karst Aquifers
Abstract
Nitrogen is a major contaminant of waterways throughout the world. This nitrogen is
derived from a variety of sources including fertilizers, municipal wastewater, and
atmospheric deposition. There has been a historical focus on nitrogen loading in surface
waters, but in recent times this focus has shifted to denitrification. Denitrification
is a major processes in which nitrogen is removed from waterways especially aquifers,
which are often low in dissolved oxygen a critical factor for denitrification. This
study focuses on the spatial relationships that influence this process using dissolved
oxygen, nitrogen, and δ15N-NO3- data collected from a previous study in the karst
Floridan Aquifer System by Heffernan et al. (2012). This data is compared to and various
spatial datasets in order to understand their influence on these parameters.
Many previous research studies have already shown how land covers exports varying
amounts of nitrogen. Changes in nitrogen export between various landuses will change
the amount of nitrogen entering a waterway. This study identified a relationship between
landuse and different rates of dissolved oxygen, nitrogen loading, and denitrification.
This paper also identified a strong relationship between wastewater treatment plant
discharge that is land applied to changes in nitrogen loading and denitrification.
To add further credence to the relationships between landuse and nitrogen a comparison
of the isotope data collected in the Heffernan et al. (2012) was conducted. This comparison
identified particular that various landuses show trends regarding their isotopic composition.
Type
Master's projectPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8589Citation
Geisenhoffer, Colin (2014). Spatial Influences on Rates of Denitrification in Floridan Karst Aquifers. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8589.Collections
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