Abstract
Understanding the seasonal patterns and influencing factors of nitrogen atmospheric deposition is essential to evaluate human impacts on the air quality and nitrogen biogeochemical cycle. However, evaluation of the nitrogen deposition flux, especially in South America agricultural regions, has not been fully investigated. In this paper, we quantified the atmospheric wet deposition fluxes of total dissolved nitrogen (TDN), dissolved organic nitrogen (DON), and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), in a region with agricultural and livestock predominance in the Southern Minas Gerais region, Brazil, from May 2018 to April 2019. Deposition fluxes of nitrogen species in the wet season (October–March) were on average 4.8-fold higher than those in the dry season, which revealed significant seasonal variations driven largely by the seasonality of rainfall and agricultural operations. We also found high NO3−/NH4+ ratios (average = 8.25), with higher values in dry season (NO3−/NH4+ = 12.8) in comparison with wet season (NO3−/NH4+ = 4.48), which revealed a higher relative contribution of NOx emissions from traffic sources in dry season. We also estimated the influence of atmospheric deposition of inorganic nitrogen (N-DIN) on environmental ecosystems, being 2.01 kgNha−1 year−1 with potential risk of acidification and eutrophication of 30%. Therefore, attention should be paid to the role of wet atmospheric deposition of nitrogen as a source of nitrogen environmental pollution in agricultural regions.
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Data availability
All meteorological data used in this research was available at INMET (Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia) websites (https://portal.inmet.gov.br/); all coding and R programing language packages are properly cited across the manuscript.
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Acknowledgements
All the authors are grateful for the resources and support given by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) for the Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarships. Special thanks go to Laboratório de Análise de Água da Universidade Federal de Lavras (LAADEG-UFLA) and Laboratório de Processos Atmosféricos da Universidade de São Paulo (LAPAt-IAG-USP).
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Conceptualization, Marcelo Vieira-Filho, Jaqueline Natiele Pereira, and Vanessa Alves Mantovani; methodology, Marcelo Vieira-Filho, Jaqueline Natiele Pereira, and Vanessa Alves Mantovani; software, Marcelo Vieira-Filho and Jaqueline Natiele Pereira; data curation, Marcelo Vieira-Filho, Jaqueline Natiele Pereira, and Vanessa Alves Mantovani; writing original draft preparation, Marcelo Vieira-Filho, Jaqueline Natiele Pereira, and Vanessa Alves Mantovani; writing, reviewing, and editing, Marcelo Vieira-Filho, Jaqueline Natiele Pereira, Vanessa Alves Mantovani, Adalgiza Fornaro, and Carlos Rogério de Mello; supervision, Marcelo Vieira-Filho; project administration, Marcelo Vieira-Filho and Carlos Rogério de Mello; funding acquisition, Adalgiza Fornaro and Carlos Rogério de Mello. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Pereira, J.N., Mantovani, V.A., de Mello, C.R. et al. Nitrogen atmospheric deposition driven by seasonal processes in a Brazilian region with agricultural background. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 37174–37184 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24870-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24870-0