Elsevier

Environmental Pollution

Volume 284, 1 September 2021, 117126
Environmental Pollution

Hotspots of reactive nitrogen loss in China: Production, consumption, spatiotemporal trend and reduction responsibility

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2021.117126Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The hotspots of reactive nitrogen (Nr) loss in China were identified in 1980–2015.

  • <20% of the Chinese territory contributed >90% of the national Nr loss since 1990.

  • A fair share of Nr loss reduction obligation should target more on the demand side.

Abstract

Effective and fair mitigation measures hinge on the identification of hotspots and tracking provenance on reactive nitrogen (Nr) loss at a high spatial resolution. We assessed the Nr loss intensity in China at 1 km spatial resolution from 1980 to 2015. The total Nr loss increased from 20.2 to 54.5 Tg N yr−1, with hotspots (>100 kg N ha−1 yr−1) concentrated in the North China Plain, the Middle and Lower Yangtze River and the Sichuan Basin. The Nr loss hotspots covered less than 20% of the Chinese territory but contributed more than 90% of total Nr loss since 1990. Geographical disparity in Nr loss has increased and calls for a fair regional policy synergy. Compared to managing Nr loss based only on production, we demonstrate that the estimation of Nr loss responsibility driven by consumption has greater potential to allocate a fair share of responsibility for reducing Nr loss.

Section snippets

Main finding

We demonstrate that <20% of the Chinese territory contributed >90% of the national Nr loss since 1990, geographical disparity in Nr loss has increased and fair share of Nr loss reduction obligation should target more on the demand side.

Nr budget module

The Nr budget module was extended by Nr flow analysis that transforms all biomass flows in the model into Nr flows. In this study, the Nr budget calculations for high-resolution assessment of Nr loss were based on our previously developed human-environment coupled N cycle model that considers loss from agriculture (including cropland, livestock, forest and aquaculture), industry, human consumption, and waste management (Luo et al., 2018). We developed and applied the model to all 31 Chinese

Spatio-temporal analysis of Nr loss hotspots

We found that there were significant temporal and spatial variations in Nr loss intensity across regions in China. During the rapid development period in China (1980–2015), the total Nr loss (including production and consumption Nr loss) increased by 170% (from 20.2 to 54.5 Tg N yr−1, Fig. S1), far exceeding the growth rate on a global scale. It took nearly a century to double the Nr loss worldwide after the invention of Haber-Bosch N fixation technology (about 100.0 Tg N yr−1 in 1910 and

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

We thank Bin Chen from Tsinghua University (China) for his advice on the Environmentally Extended Multi-region Input−Output Analysis (EE-MRIO).

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  • This paper has been recommended for acceptance by Dr. Jörg Rinklebe.

    1

    These authors contributed equally to this work.

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