ABSTRACT
Agricultural phosphorus (P) losses are harmful to water quality, but knowledge gaps about the importance of fertilizer management practices on new (recently applied) sources of P may limit P loss mitigation efforts. Weighted regression models applied to subsurface tile drainage water quality data enabled estimating the new P losses associated with 155 P applications in Ohio and Indiana, USA. Daily discharge and dissolved reactive P (DRP) and total P (TP) loads were used to detect increases in P loss following each application which was considered new P. The magnitude of new P losses was small relative to fertilizer application rates, averaging 79.3 g DRP ha-1 and 96.1 g TP ha-1 , or <3% of P applied. The eight largest new P losses surpassed 330 g DRP ha-1 or 575 g TP ha-1 . New P loss mitigation strategies should focus on broadcast liquid manure applications; on average, manure applications caused greater new P losses than inorganic fertilizers, and surface broadcast applications were associated with greater new P losses than injected or incorporated applications. Late fall applications risked having large new P losses applications. On an annual basis, new P contributed an average of 14% of DRP and 5% of TP losses from tile drains, which is much less than previous studies that included surface runoff, suggesting that tile drainage is relatively buffered with regard to new P losses. Therefore old (preexisting soil P) P sources dominated tile drain P losses, and P loss reduction efforts will need to address this source.