Sustainable Nutrients Management Strategies to Reduce Nutrients Pollution Along the Landscape-River-Sea Systems
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Soil and Water".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 November 2025 | Viewed by 1350
Special Issue Editors
Interests: nutrients; pollution; freshwaters; ecology; microbial ecotoxicology; sustainability; circularity
Interests: circularity; microalgae; nutrient recovery; sustainability; wastewater; water reuse
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The overwhelming scientific evidence provided by the academic corpus indicates that planetary boundaries for nutrients (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus) have transgressed since the middle of the 20th century. This excess has mainly been the consequence of the overuse of mineral fertilizers’ use in agriculture and nutrient losses from intensive livestock. Nutrient excess has led to a progressive impoverishment of soils, which have become more dependent on external supplies responsible for increasing soil and water pollution. Another important source of nutrients to aquatic ecosystems is represented by treated and untreated sewage water from different origins (i.e., urban). Nutrient pollution, especially due to N and P excesses and imbalances, poses significant challenges to water quality, soil health, and biodiversity worldwide, also potentially exacerbating climate change due to additional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. On the other hand, nutrients are fundamental to ensure food production but current production of mineral fertilizers are highly demanding in energy and resources. Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop effective and sustainable management strategies to favor their reuse, recovery, and recycling, boosting circular economy models, particularly in the agri-food and wastewater treatment sectors.
This Special Issue focuses on innovative sustainable nutrients management strategies that can help mitigate nutrient losses to soil, water, and air derived from a wide range of human activities, particularly from agri-food and wastewater treatment sectors. Works focusing on agricultural practices favoring a reduction in mineral fertilizer use and its replacement with bio-based and tailor-made products obtained from waste streams are welcome. On the other hand, we encourage submissions of studies focusing on technologies aiming to recover nutrients from secondary sources, reducing nutrient emissions to the environment. Scientific and review articles aiming to investigate and describe biogeochemical dynamics and nutrient flows along landscape–river–sea systems at the catchment level are also invited. Field studies and works reporting the results of controlled experiments in laboratory and/or relevant and operational environments of these recovered nutrients will also be considered for publication.
Finally, the SI was launched in collaboration with the 5th European Sustainable Phosphorus Platform Conference and welcomes submissions from participants of the conference.
Dr. Lorenzo Proia
Dr. Josue González Camejo
Guest Editors
Dr. Laura Díaz-Guerra
Guest Editor Assistant
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- nutrients
- pollution
- soil
- rivers
- sea
- wastewaters
- agricultural practices
- environmental technologies
- sustainability
- circularity
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