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Targeted wetland restoration could greatly reduce nitrogen pollution

Wetlands remove nitrate pollution from water effectively. An analysis shows that this effect is constrained in the United States by the distribution of wetlands, and could be increased by targeting wetland restoration to nitrate sources.
  1. Jacques C. Finlay

    1. Jacques C. Finlay is in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul 55108, Minnesota, USA.

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Human activities have increased the amounts of reactive nitrogen compounds — forms of nitrogen that can be used by organisms for growth — in the environment. The resulting overabundance of reactive nitrogen has far-reaching consequences for ecosystems, climate, and human health and well-being1. Fertilizers are the largest global source of anthropogenic nitrogen inputs2, and so intensive efforts have been made to reduce nitrogen transport from agricultural land to ground and surface waters, but with mixed results. Writing in Nature, Cheng et al.3 report that sources of river nitrogen pollution in the United States are often spatially separated from existing wetlands (Fig. 1), which can remove nitrate from water, and show that wetland restoration targeted to nitrate sources would yield substantial benefits for downstream water quality.

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Nature 588, 592-593 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03515-7

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