Tackling agricultural diffuse pollution: What might uptake of farmer-preferred measures deliver for emissions to water and air?

Collins, Adrian L.; Zhang, Yusheng; Winter, Michael; Inman, Alex; Jones, J. Iwan; Johnes, Penny J; Cleasby, W.; Vrain, Emilie; Lovett, Andrew A.; Noble, Lister

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.12.130

Cited by 59 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…This study shows that the underlying trend of increasing P losses under climate change (up to 30% by 2050s) is larger than the theoretical reduction recently predicted for maximum uptake of farmer-preferred mitigation options (around 15% for catchment scale 16 ). These findings are also applicable to other agricultural regions in the world with temperate climates where wetter winters are projected.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 54%

“…Our integrated, multi-disciplinary study follows these recommendations, with the potential to contribute to the understanding of likely future P losses. We show that the predicted increase in winter P loads due to climate change (up to 30% by 2050s) is greater than the technically feasible reduction from mitigation measures estimated in previous studies 16 . Our study suggests that only large-scale agricultural changes (e.g., 20–80% reduction in P inputs) will limit the projected impacts of climate change on P loads in these catchments.…”

Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 53%

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Major agricultural changes required to mitigate phosphorus losses under climate change

et al. 2017

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Phosphorus losses from land to water will be impacted by climate change and land management for food production, with detrimental impacts on aquatic ecosystems. Here we use a unique combination of methods to evaluate the impact of projected climate change on future phosphorus transfers, and to assess what scale of agricultural change would be needed to mitigate these transfers. We combine novel high-frequency phosphorus flux data from three representative catchments across the UK, a new high-spatial resolution climate model, uncertainty estimates from an ensemble of future climate simulations, two phosphorus transfer models of contrasting complexity and a simplified representation of the potential intensification of agriculture based on expert elicitation from land managers. We show that the effect of climate change on average winter phosphorus loads (predicted increase up to 30% by 2050s) will be limited only by large-scale agricultural changes (e.g., 20–80% reduction in phosphorus inputs).

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 54%

Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 53%

Major agricultural changes required to mitigate phosphorus losses under climate change

et al. 2017

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“…Therefore, the national reductions achieved by the schemes on around 40% of the total agricultural land area represent an important contribution to the feasible improvement in water quality. The limits on maximum reduction were partly a result of assumed high levels of baseline uptake of many mitigation practices, informed by the Wales farm practice survey, and are comparable with the 10-20% reported for England and Wales (Collins et al 2016).…”

Section: N a T I O N A L S C A L E I M P A C Tsupporting

confidence: 61%

Do agri‐environment schemes result in improved water quality?

Jones

Murphy

Anthony

et al. 2016

Journal of Applied Ecology

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1. Improved water quality, through a reduction in diffuse pollution from agricultural sources, is an expected benefit of agri-environment schemes, but this has yet to be demonstrated in practice. Here, we evaluate the impact of Welsh agri-environment schemes on water quality and freshwater ecosystem condition through a combined monitoring and modelling framework. 2. To determine the influence of the agri-environment schemes on ecosystem condition, spatially independent catchments dominated by a single scheme (>40% of catchment) were compared to control catchments dominated (>70%) by agricultural land that was not part of any scheme. Biological indicators of water quality were monitored at the outfall of each catchment and a spatially explicit modelling framework of diffuse pollutant emissions applied to each of the 80 catchments. 3. Direct comparison (scheme/non-scheme) was unable to identify any significant effect of agrienvironment scheme participation. However, derived biological indicators that reflected organic pollution, eutrophication and pesticide run-off were strongly correlated with modelled concentrations of corresponding diffuse pollutants, thus providing a ground-truth for the models. Scenarios that assessed the correct counterfactuals (i.e. the influence of scheme entry on pollutant output) were developed for the whole of Wales. The models indicated an important effect of scheme entry on water quality, but this effect was not evenly distributed across the landscape. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our results indicate that agri-environment schemes can deliver improvements in water quality, through a reduction in diffuse pollution from agricultural sources. However, it is not easy to demonstrate scheme effectiveness; the combination of field survey and modelling used here provides a framework for addressing these difficulties. A spatially targeted approach for agri-environment scheme options to protect water resources from diffuse pollution is likely to be most effective at delivering water quality improvements.

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“…Therefore, they are critical to informing targeted interventions and improving our understanding of the impact of agricultural management decisions on water quality and the likely ecological 'benefits' associated with the implementation of DPMMs in different environmental settings (Taylor et al, 2013). This paper, reports the hydrochemical monitoring evidence collected over the period 2011-2014 from the UK Government's Demonstration Test Catchments (DTC) programme in the Hampshire Avon and Tamar catchments, in England (McGonigle et al, 2014;Collins et al, 2016), in order to determine sources of diffuse pollution and thereby appropriate DPMMs to implement, to establish the parameters that must be measured in order to capture the key pollutant forms potentially impacting on stream ecology in agricultural catchments, under different environmental settings, we collected data at daily and sub-daily frequency over multiple sites to address four questions:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determining the sources of nutrient flux to water in headwater catchments: Examining the speciation balance to inform the targeting of mitigation measures

Lloyd

Johnes

Freer

et al. 2019

Science of The Total Environment

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General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms Determining the sources of nutrient flux to water in headwater catchments: Examining the speciation balance to inform the targeting of mitigation measures H I G H L I G H T S• N speciation and P fractionation analysed for catchments with contrasting character.• Nitrate was the dominant N species in the chalk sub-catchments.• Organic and particulate N comprised the majority of the load in the clay rivers.• Orthophosphate was not found to be the dominant fraction in any of the catchments.• Particulate P was always an important P source, particularly in the clay catchments. Diffuse water pollution from agriculture (DWPA) is a major environmental concern, with significant adverse impacts on both human and ecosystem health. However, without an appropriate understanding of the multiple factors impacting on water, mitigation measures cannot be targeted. Therefore, this paper addresses this gap in understanding, reporting the hydrochemical monitoring evidence collected from the UK Government's Demonstration Test Catchments (DTC) programme including contrasting chalk and clay/mudstone catchments. We use data collected at daily and sub-daily frequency over multiple sites to address: (1) How does the behaviour of the full range of nitrogen (N) species and phosphorus (P) fractions vary? (2) How do N species and P fractions vary inter-and intra-annually? (3) What do these data indicate about the primary pollution sources? And (4) which diffuse pollution mitigation measures are appropriate in our study landscapes? Key differences in the rates of flux of nutrients were identified, dependent on catchment characteristics. Full N speciation and P fractionation, together with dissolved organic carbon (DOC) enabled identification of the most likely contributing sources in each catchment. Nitrate (NO 3 -N) was the dominant N fraction in the chalk G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Contents lists available at ScienceDirectScience of the Total Environment j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / s c i t o t e n v whereas organic and particulate N comprised the majority of the load in the clay/mudstone catchments. Despite current legislation, orthophosphate (PO 4 -P) was not found to be the dominant form of P in any of the catchments monitored. The chalk sub-catchments had the largest proportion of inorganic/dissolved organic P (DOP), accompanied by episodic delivery of particulate P (PP). Contrastingly, the clay/mudstone sub-catchments loads were dominated by PP and DOP. Thus, our results show that by monitoring both the inorganic and organic fractions a more complete picture of catchment nutrient fluxes can be determined, and sources of pollution pin-pointed. Ultimately, policy and management to bring nutrient impacts under control...

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Tackling agricultural diffuse pollution: What might uptake of farmer-preferred measures deliver for emissions to water and air?

Cited by 59 publications

References 62 publications

Major agricultural changes required to mitigate phosphorus losses under climate change

Major agricultural changes required to mitigate phosphorus losses under climate change

Do agri‐environment schemes result in improved water quality?

Determining the sources of nutrient flux to water in headwater catchments: Examining the speciation balance to inform the targeting of mitigation measures

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