Assessment of nitrate contamination risk: The Italian experience

Capri, E.; Civita, Massimo; Corniello, Alfonso; Cusimano, Girolamo; Maio, Marina De; Ducci, Daniela; Fait, Gabriella; Fiorucci, Adriano; Hauser, S.; Pisciotta, Antonino; Pranzini, Giovanni; Trevisan, Marco; Huertas, António Delgado; Ferrari, Federico; Frullini, R.; Nisi, Bárbara; Offi, Marco; Vaselli, Orlando; Vassallo, M

doi:10.1016/j.gexplo.2009.02.006

Cited by 44 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…It concurs with published literature as a potential issue throughout Europe, including the northern and central case study MSs: the UK [46], Sweden [47], Poland [48], France [49], northern Spain [50,51] and Germany [52]. Italy [53,54] and Greece [55] in the south also report NO 3 ¡ leaching from cultivated land, a factor further influenced by irrigation during drier periods of the year [56]. The mitigation of N leaching on cultivated land is applicable to all MSs although it may be restricted to a smaller number of regions in the south of Europe, which at a lower spatial resolution may be overlooked.…”

Section: ¡1supporting

confidence: 88%

Rural Development Program measures on cultivated land in Europe to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – regional “hotspots” and priority measures

et al. 2016

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Agriculture is a significant source of GHG emissions, contributing 10% of total emissions within the EU-28. Emissions from European agriculture have been reduced, albeit at the expense of crop yield and the risk of production displacement (the transfer of production, and associated emissions, to land outside of Europe). This article assesses the impact on GHG emissions of selected European Rural Development Program measures, representative of a diversity of management strategies implemented on cultivated land, within nine European Member States. Climatic zone and underlying spatial environmental variables were accounted for using a novel technique, "Regional Variation Categories," developed with European-scale GIS data sets. Production displacement is assessed with two benchmarks: (1) compared with existing crop production and (2) relative to a "minimum requirement" land management scenario, where an emissions reduction of less than this does not constitute mitigation. Most measures reduce emissions relative to the baseline crop scenario; however, many do not reduce emissions beyond the "minimum requirement," this being limited to measures such as catch crops and within-field grass areas to prevent soil erosion. The selection and targeting of measures to maximize agricultural GHG mitigation on cultivated land within Europe is discussed.

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Section: ¡1supporting

confidence: 88%

Rural Development Program measures on cultivated land in Europe to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – regional “hotspots” and priority measures

et al. 2016

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“…Based on the PCA results, an assessment of potential nitrate contamination risk was made by correlating the agricultural nitrate hazard index-IPNOA (Padovani and Trevisan 2002;Corniello et al 2007;Capri et al 2009)-with the SINTACS index. For IPNOA only the nitrogen load from farming was taken into account and so only farmed areas, which are the leading sources of potential nitrate contamination, were considered.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Much of this irrigation water has been drawn from groundwater as people realised the advantages to increased productivity of timely irrigation and security of application (Morris et al 2003;Gleeson et al 2010). Most agricultural land uses have provided major sources of diffuse groundwater contamination since the introduction of mechanisation and use of fertilisers (Capri et al 2009). In particular, the past decades have led to an increasing use of fertilisers and pesticides, most of them with high con-centrations of nitrogen and phosphorus (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of groundwater contamination in an agricultural peri-urban area (NW Portugal): an integrated approach

et al. 2014

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The excessive use of pesticides and fertilisers in agriculture has generated a decrease in groundwater and surface water quality in many regions of the EU, consti-tuting a hazard for human health and the environment. Besides, on-site sewage disposal is an important source of groundwater contamination in urban and peri-urban areas. The assessment of groundwater vulnerability to contami-nation is an important tool to fulfil the demands of EU Directives. The purpose of this study is to assess the groundwater vulnerability to contamination related mainly to agricultural activities in a peri-urban area (Vila do Conde, NW Portugal). The hydrogeological framework is characterised mainly by fissured granitic basement and sedimentary cover. Water samples were collected and analysed for temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, chloride, phosphate, nitrate and nitrite. An evaluation of groundwater vulnerability to contamination was applied (GOD-S, Pesticide DRASTIC-Fm, SINTACS and SI) and the potential nitrate contamination risk was assessed, both on a hydrogeological GIS-based mapping. A principal component analysis was performed to characterised pat-terns of relationship among groundwater contamination, vulnerability, and the hydrogeological setting assessed. Levels of nitrate above legislation limits were detected in 75 % of the samples analysed. Alluvia units showed the highest nitrate concentrations and also the highest vulner-ability and risk. Nitrate contamination is a serious problem affecting groundwater, particularly shallow aquifers, especially due to agriculture activities, livestock and cesspools. GIS-based cartography provided an accurate way to improve knowledge on water circulation models and global functioning of local aquifer systems. Finally, this study highlights the adequacy of an integrated approach, combining hydrogeochemical data, vulnerability assessments and multivariate analysis, to understand groundwater processes in peri-urban areas.

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“…As pointed out by Nkoa (2014), digestate can be toxic for the environment by several causal compounds: ammonia, volatile organic loads, salts and heavy metals. Moreover, an excessive land application of fertilisers can cause a diffuse groundwater contamination (Capri et al, 2009). A few studies included ecotoxicological assessment of agro-zootechnical digestate, mostly focused on phytotoxicity test (Gell et al, 2011; Di Maria et al, 2014) but none of them applied a battery of bioassays to check the toxicity before and after a treatment with microalgae.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microalgae treatment removes nutrients and reduces ecotoxicity of diluted piggery digestate

Franchino

Tigini

Varese

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

118

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Liquid digestate is considered as an important by-product of anaerobic digestion of agriculture wastes. Currently, it is very often directly spread on local agricultural land. Yet recently concerns on its environmental risk of this processing has begun to rise. On the other hand, investigations on the effectiveness of microalgae for wastewater treatment have started to consider also this complex matrix. In this study, we cultured the green alga Chlorella vulgaris in diluted digestate coming from the anaerobic digestion of pig slurry and corn, with the aim to significantly reduce its toxicity and its very high nutrient concentration.For this purpose, a battery of toxicity tests composed of four acute and two chronic bioassays was applied after the alga cultivation. Results were compared with those obtained in the initial characterization of the digestate. Results show that highly diluted piggery digestate can be a suitable medium for culturing microalgae, as we obtained a high removal efficiency (> 90%) for ammonia, total nitrogen and phosphate, though after a few days phosphorus limitation occurred. Toxicity was significantly reduced for all the organisms tested. Possible solutions for optimizing this approach avoiding high dilution rates are discussed.

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Assessment of nitrate contamination risk: The Italian experience

Cited by 44 publications

References 10 publications

Rural Development Program measures on cultivated land in Europe to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – regional “hotspots” and priority measures

Rural Development Program measures on cultivated land in Europe to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – regional “hotspots” and priority measures

Assessment of groundwater contamination in an agricultural peri-urban area (NW Portugal): an integrated approach

Microalgae treatment removes nutrients and reduces ecotoxicity of diluted piggery digestate

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