{"id":5504,"date":"2018-10-16T11:10:43","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T01:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/?page_id=5504"},"modified":"2018-10-16T11:13:30","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T01:13:30","slug":"plugging-the-gaps-finding-colloidally-suspended-nitrogen-in-reef-catchment-runoff","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/news-events\/e-newsletters-2\/october-2018\/plugging-the-gaps-finding-colloidally-suspended-nitrogen-in-reef-catchment-runoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Plugging the gaps: Finding colloidally-suspended nitrogen in Reef catchment runoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nitrogen is a major component of the fertilisers that are added to crops such as sugarcane and bananas, which are the primary crop types grown in the Great Barrier Reef catchment. It can also be delivered from soil erosion, which is dominated by grazing lands. Understanding all of the sources of nitrogen is important for developing mitigation strategies to reduce nitrogen loads from large river basins draining to the Great Barrier Reef.<\/p>\n

\"\"A Tropical Water Quality Hub project<\/strong><\/a> led by Dr Rebecca Bartley from CSIRO is evaluating the effectiveness of gully remediation strategies on reducing the sediment and nutrient losses from gully erosion. A recent publication from this project found that a significant proportion of the nitrogen mobilised when gully soil erodes is comprised of very small colloidal soil particles. These particles are so small that they pass right through the filters normally used to identify particulate nitrogen, and so they would normally be defined as \u2018dissolved\u2019 nitrogen.<\/p>\n

This component of the research was led by Dr Jonathan Judy (formerly of CSIRO but now with the University of Florida, USA) who said nearly half of the particles were previously thought to be dissolved nitrogen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis study demonstrates that up to 45% of the soil nitrogen passed through a 0.45-micron filter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dr Bartley said the findings had significant implications for nitrogen management in the Great Barrier Reef.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many years we have been perplexed by the relatively high levels of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) in water running off non-fertilised grazing lands,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cNow we know that much of this nitrogen is not dissolved but is actually attached to very small soil particles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis finding has implications for establishing and evaluating water quality targets, and also for how we prioritise investment in catchment remediation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears that managing soil erosion can reduce the amount of what is typically treated as dissolved nitrogen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis project brought research techniques developed for studying the transport of contaminants in soils to a new environmental challenge, with broad implications for water quality management,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The research article describing these findings is available in the Nature Publishing Journal Scientific Reports<\/strong><\/a> and more information on Rebecca Bartley\u2019s Tropical Water Quality Hub project can be found online<\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Back to the October 2018 e-Newsletter contents<\/strong><\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nitrogen is a major component of the fertilisers that are added to crops such as sugarcane and bananas, which are the primary crop types grown in the Great Barrier Reef … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5506,"parent":5484,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5504","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5504\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}