Agriculture Land Use and Its Effect on Nitrogen Contamination of Surface Water and Groundwater

Dear Colleagues,

Agriculture uses 70 percent of the world’s water, and nitrates from agriculture are a major source of groundwater contamination worldwide. It has been 30 years since the European Nitrate Initiative was established, and little progress has been made in many places in Europe toward lowering the concentration of nitrates. China is the largest user of nitrogen fertilizer in the world, and 60 percent of their groundwater is polluted. Groundwater nitrate pollution in the U.S. caused by agriculture has been reported in the literature since the 1970s. Many programs have been developed for farmers to implement best management practices (BMPs). There is still a need to measure the effectiveness of some BMPs, and more implementation of BMPs are needed for agriculture land in some areas. Since the 1950s, the formation of a large hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico has been caused by nutrient discharges from the Mississippi River, which drains 41 percent of land in the U.S. Agriculture is the largest source of nitrate discharge with most nitrates coming from subsurface drainage in the Midwest states.

For this Special Issue, entitled “ Agriculture Land Use and Its Effect on Nitrogen Contamination of Surface Water and Groundwater”, we are looking for case studies, long-term monitoring studies, the adoption of new technology, regulatory policies and the development of sustainable land use practices in order to solve this problem from a worldwide prospective and contribute new information to the literature.

Prof. Dr. William Frederick Ritter
Guest Editor

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