Over the past decade, there has been a rapid increase in dairy farming in New Zealand. Nitrate leaching from intensive agricultural systems, e.g. dairy farms, is suspected to cause increased nitrate concentrations in ground and surface waters. The objective of this research programme was to determine nitrate leaching losses on dairy pasture systems as affected by the application of dairy shed e...

When applied to soils, it is unclear whether and how biochar can affect soil nutrients. This has implications both to the availability of nutrients to plants or microbes, as well as to the question of whether biochar soil amendment may enhance or reduce the leaching of nutrients. In this work, a range of laboratory experiments were conducted to determine the effect of biochar amendment on sorpt...

Direct grazing of winter forage crops to feed non-lactating, pregnant dairy cows prior to calving is a common management practice in the New Zealand South Island. However, the high crop yields per hectare grazed, combined with a high stocking density of cows, means this potentially leads to large amounts of urinary nitrogen (N) deposited on bare, wet soil, that in turn, could lead to high nitra...

The decline in water quality in Lake Taupo has been attributed to nitrogen (N) leaching from surrounding land areas. Pastoral agriculture has been identified as a significant contributor to this N transfer to the lake through animal urine deposition. There is therefore an immediate need for new management options to reduce N losses. The objective of this study was to measure the effectiveness o...

Protecting water resources from nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) contamination is an important public health concern and a major national environmental issue in China. Loss of NO3-N in soils due to leaching is not only one of the most important problems in agriculture farming, but is also the main factor causing nitrogen pollution in aquatic environments. Three typical intensive agriculture farmlands i...

This study provides a combined dataset on N loss pathways and fluxes from sloping cropland in the purple soil area, southwestern China. A lysimeter experiment was conducted to quantify nitrate leaching (May 2004-May 2010) and N(2)O emission (May 2009-May 2010) losses. Nitrate leaching was the dominant N loss pathway and annual leaching fluxes ranged from 19.2 to 53.4 kg N ha(-1), with significa...

At the European scale, nitrate concentration is the most important parameter that determines groundwater quality. Since in most cases nitrate input into the aquifer is a non-point source pollution problem, measures to reduce nitrate leaching have to be designed on the aquifer scale. In this context we have coupled the unsaturated, vertical soil water and nitrogen transport model SIMWASER/STOTRA...

Current biofuel feedstock crops such as corn lead to large environmental losses of N through nitrate leaching and NO emissions; second-generation cellulosic crops have the potential to reduce these N losses. We measured N losses and cycling in establishing miscanthus (), switchgrass ( L. fertilized with 56 kg N ha yr), and mixed prairie, along with a corn ( L.)-corn-soybean [ (L.) Merr.] rotati...

The effects of organic and mineral nitrogen fertilization on nitrogen leaching and nitrate concentration in percolated water were simulated using the CANDY model. In a long-term IOSDV field experiment carried out from 1983 to the present in Lukavec, Czech Republic, increasing nitrogen rates from 0 kg to 200 kg N*ha in mineral fertilizers were combined with the application of farmyard manure or ...