Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment

Removal of agricultural non-point source pollutants by riparian vegetated filter strips from upstream of Liao River, China

Author(s):

Jiaxi Tang ¹, Lina Sun ²*, Tieheng Sun ², Hongling Zhang ²

Recieved Date: 2013-07-20, Accepted Date: 2013-10-30

Abstract:

Riparian vegetated filter strips (RVFS) are an efficient approach to reduce agricultural non-point source pollution transported in runoff before the water flows into watercourses. A field scale study was conducted from 2012 to 2013 to evaluate the ability of cold climate grasses or trees RVFS of different widths (5 m, 9 m and 13 m) to attenuate surface runoff and nutrients from corn field in rainfall and snowmelt events. The experimental site consisted of three plots adjacent to agricultural edge (weeds-T1, sweet clover (Melilotus suaveolens L.)-T2 and sweet clover (Melilotus suaveolens L.)/China wingnut (Pterocarya stenoptera C. DC.)-T3). T2 and T3 were new established filter strips that were compared with weeds (T1). The 13 m-wide RVFS were instrumented with runoff water collectors to monitor surface runoff for ammonium nitrogen (NH₄⁺-N), nitrate nitrogen (NO₃^--N), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), dissolved phosphorus (DP). RVFS reduced the mass of the pollutants rather than concentration in all runoff events. In natural rainfall events, RVFS (T1, T2 and T3) significantly reduced runoff water volumes by 55.49%, 64.70% and 78.06%, TN by 50.09%, 52.70% and 55.10%, NO₃^--N by 55.30%, 55.95% and 50.11% at the first 5 m width, respectively. T2 and T3 have the higher retention effectiveness than T1 for NH₄⁺-N. RVFS (T1, T2 and T3) significantly reduced TP by 62.89%, 61.91% and 91.72%, DP by 42.33%, 48.61% and 89.96% over 9 m width. All the parameters were reduced more than 80% over the 13 m-wide RVFS in the rainfall events. The retention effectiveness was low due to soil freezing in snowmelt events. The snowmelt was the dominant event in terms of agricultural non-point pollution. Especially, the snowmelt event represented 91.66%, 89.86% and 98.69% of the total loads for DP exported from the 13 m filter strips in T1, T2 and T3, respectively. Overall, sweet clover filter strip was better to retain nitrogen from agricultural field, the addition of China Wingnut have higher filtering capacity of the phosphorus.

Keywords:

Riparian vegetated filter strips (RVFS), sweet clover, China wingnut, Liao River, agricultural non-point source pollution, nitrogen, phosphorus, runoff, rainfall, snowmelt

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Journal: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment
Year: 2013
Volume: 11
Issue: 3&4
Category: Environment
Pages: 2152-2159

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