Assessment of the Evolution of Nitrate Deposition Using Remote Sensing Data Over the Yangtze River Delta, China

Along with the increasing concentration of nitrogenous pollutants emitted from the combustion and fertilizers, atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition has become a great concern due to its significant ecological effect, especially in severe N emission regions such as the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in east China. The spatial and temporal nitrate deposition fluxes were conducted using satellite data in YRD from 1996 to 2011. Our study reveals significant spatial variations of nitrate deposition in YRD region. In general, the fluxes of total (dry plus wet) nitrate deposition in YRD were up to 22.03 kg·N·ha-1·yr-1 with large loading received in winter. Most high fluxes appeared over urban (37.72 kg·N·ha-1·yr-1) and cropland (30.29 kg·N·ha-1·yr-1) areas. During the study period (1996-2011), a significant increasing trend of nitrate deposition was clearly observed in YRD with an annual rate of 1.33 kg·N·ha-1·yr-1. The spatial patterns of estimated nitrate deposition also showed that there were much higher fluxes and annual increasing trend in the middle region of YRD, i.e., the metropolitan areas contained Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou cities, than in other areas. Our results also reveal that dry nitrate deposition contributed more than 50% of the total nitrate deposition over all provinces and land covers except coastal sea (14.27%), which indicates the relative importance of dry deposition to the total nitrate deposition in the YRD region. Therefore, it is necessary to consider both dry and wet deposition when evaluating the influences of nitrate deposition on environment and ecosystem health.

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