Improved Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Crop Production at the Catchment Scale via a Process-Based Nitrogen Simulation Model.

One of the major challenges in environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of crop production is the nonlinearity between nitrogen (N) fertilizer inputs and on-site N emissions resulting from complex biogeochemical processes. A few studies have addressed this nonlinearity by combining process-based N simulation models with LCA, but none accounted for nitrate (NO3(-)) flows across fields. In this study, we present a new method, TNT2-LCA, that couples the topography-based simulation of nitrogen transfer and transformation (TNT2) model with LCA, and compare the new method with a current LCA method based on a French life cycle inventory database. Application of the two methods to a case study of crop production in a catchment in France showed that, compared to the current method, TNT2-LCA allows delineation of more appropriate temporal limits when developing data for on-site N emissions associated with specific crops in this catchment. It also improves estimates of NO3(-) emissions by better consideration of agricultural practices, soil-climatic conditions, and spatial interactions of NO3(-) flows across fields, and by providing predicted crop yield. The new method presented in this study provides improved LCA of crop production at the catchment scale.

Modelling denitrification at the catchment scale.

The objective of this work was to evaluate the importance of heterotrophic denitrification in the fate of nitrogen surpluses at the catchment scale. For that purpose we modified the denitrification module of TNT2 model and calibrated the model on a small catchment where denitrification measurements had been performed in different locations. The main interest of the TNT2 model is its ability to simulate the dynamics of the zones where soil and shallow water table interact, making it possible to spatialize the denitrification process. Daily water and nitrogen flux at the outlet were relatively well simulated (Nash of 0.85 and 0.77). In average, the model correctly simulates the denitrification measurements (R=0.68). Nitrogen flux towards the atmosphere, at the catchment scale (4.70 g N m(-2) year(-1)), is of the same order of magnitude as the soluble N flux in the stream. The model was able to reproduce the distribution of denitrification in the riparian (mean of 9.26 g N m(-2) year(-1)) and hillslope (mean of 3.45 g N m(-2) year(-1)) domains of the catchment. The results confirm the importance of riparian denitrification, but show also that hillslope soils contribute significantly (60%) to the whole catchment denitrification. The variations of denitrification rates, and also of nitrate concentrations in stream were not very well simulated by the model, highlighting the complexity of the spatial and temporal controls of nitrogen dynamics in areas with high inputs of nitrogen fertilizers, especially under organic forms.