Curative vs. preventive management of nitrogen transfers in rural areas: lessons from the case of the Orgeval watershed (Seine River basin, France).

The Orgeval watershed (104 km(2)) is a long-term experimental observatory and research site, representative of rural areas with intensive cereal farming of the temperate world. Since the past few years, we have been carrying out several studies on nitrate source, transformation and transfer of both surface and groundwaters in relation with land use and agriculture practices in order to assess nitrate (NO3(-)) leaching, contamination of aquifers, denitrification processes and associated nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. A synthesis of these studies is presented to establish a quantitative diagnosis of nitrate contamination and N2O emissions at the watershed scale. Taking this watershed as a practical example, we compare curative management measures, such as pond introduction, and preventive measures, namely conversion to organic farming practices, using model simulations. It is concluded that only preventive measures are able to reduce the NO3(-) contamination level without further increasing N2O emissions, a result providing new insights for future management bringing together water-agro-ecosystems.

Impact of nitrate-enhanced leachate recirculation on gaseous releases from a landfill bioreactor cell.

This study evaluates the impact of nitrate injection on a full scale landfill bioreactor through the monitoring of gaseous releases and particularly N(2)O emissions. During several weeks, we monitored gas concentrations in the landfill gas collection system as well as surface gas releases with a series of seven static chambers. These devices were directly connected to a gas chromatograph coupled to a flame ionisation detector and an electron capture detector (GC-FID/ECD) placed directly on the field. Measurements were performed before, during and after recirculation of raw leachate and nitrate-enhanced leachate. Raw leachate recirculation did not have a significant effect on the biogas concentrations (CO(2), CH(4) and N(2)O) in the gas extraction network. However, nitrate-enhanced leachate recirculation induced a marked increase of the N(2)O concentrations in the gas collected from the recirculation trench (100-fold increase from 0.2 ppm to 23 ppm). In the common gas collection system however, this N(2)O increase was no more detectable because of dilution by gas coming from other cells or ambient air intrusion. Surface releases through the temporary cover were characterized by a large spatial and temporal variability. One automated chamber gave limited standard errors over each experimental period for N(2)O releases: 8.1 +/- 0.16 mg m(-2) d(-1) (n = 384), 4.2 +/- 0.14 mg m(-2) d(-1) (n = 132) and 1.9 +/- 0.10 mg m(-2) d(-1) (n = 49), during, after raw leachate and nitrate-enhanced leachate recirculation, respectively. No clear correlation between N(2)O gaseous surface releases and recirculation events were evidenced. Estimated N(2)O fluxes remained in the lower range of what is reported in the literature for landfill covers, even after nitrate injection.