Journal of Environmental Quality

Deserts are the most frequent locations of terrestrial crude oil contaminations. Nevertheless, the long-term effects of petroleum hydrocarbons on desert ecosystems are still unknown, which makes risk assessment and decision making concerning remediation difficult. This study examined the long-term effects of petroleum hydrocarbons on perennial desert vegetation. The study site was a hyper-arid area in the south of Israel, which was contaminated by a crude oil spill in 1975. The contaminated area was compared to uncontaminated reference areas...

Conservation planning information is important for identifying options for watershed water quality improvement and can be developed for use at field, farm, and watershed scales. Translation across scales is a key issue impeding progress at watershed scales because watershed improvement goals must be connected with implementation of farm- and field-level conservation practices to demonstrate success. This is particularly true when examining alternatives for "trap and treat" practices implemented at agricultural-field edges to control (or influence) water flows through fields, landscapes, and riparian corridors within agricultural watersheds...

Every year, the production of coal-bed natural gas in the Powder River Basin results in the discharge of large amounts of coal-bed methane water (CBMW) in Wyoming; however, no sustainable disposal methods for CBMW are currently available. A greenhouse study was conducted to evaluate the potential to use CBMW as a source of irrigation water for camelina [ (L.) Crantz]. We assessed the effects of three CBMW concentrations (0% [1:0], 50% [1:1], and 100% [0:1] tap water to CBMW) on selected soil properties, growth, seed oil, and fatty acid composition of three camelina cultivars: Blaine Creek, Ligena, and Pronghorn...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Wildland fire can alter mercury (Hg) cycling on land and in adjacent aquatic environments. In addition to enhancing local atmospheric Hg redeposition, fire can influence terrestrial movement of Hg and other elements into lakes via runoff from burned upland soil. However, the impact of fire on water quality and the accumulation of Hg in fish remain equivocal. We investigated the effects of fire-specifically, a low-severity prescribed fire and moderate-severity wildfire-on young-of-the-year yellow perch () and lake chemistry in a small remote watershed in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Biosolids disposal to landfill or through incineration is wasteful of a resource that is rich in organic matter and plant nutrients. Land application can improve soil fertility and enhance crop production but may result in excessive nitrate N (NO-N) leaching and residual contamination from pathogens, heavy metals, and xenobiotics. This paper evaluates evidence that these concerns can be reduced significantly by blending biosolids with organic materials to reduce the environmental impact of biosolids application to soils...

Although a higher oxidation rate for nitrite than for ammonia generally prevents nitrite accumulation in oxic waters, nitrite concentrations in the Seine River (1-31 μM) exceed European norms. We investigated the kinetics of in situ ammonia- and nitrite-oxidizing communities in river water and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents to determine the role of pelagic nitrification in the origin and persistence of nitrite downstream of Paris. The main source of nitrite is the major Parisian WWTP, and its persistence, up to tens of kilometers downstream of the plant, is explained by low ammonia and nitrite oxidation rates and high river flow...

Benzene kresoxim-methyl (BKM) is a promising broad-spectrum strobilurin fungicide widely used to control fungal pathogens in crops. However, information on its environmental fate is limited. To broaden our understanding of this fungicide's kinetic fate in aerobic soils, we labeled BKM with C on its benzoate ring and used ultralow-level liquid scintillation counting coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography analysis. Results show that degradation, mineralization, and bound residue (BR) formation of BKM was controlled by soil type and microbial community composition...

Urbanization affects ecosystem function and environmental quality through shifts in ecosystem fluxes that are brought on by features of the built environment. Green infrastructure (GI) has been suggested as a best management practice (BMP) to address urban hydrologic and ecological impacts of the built environment, but GI practice has only been studied from a limited set of climatic conditions and disciplinary approaches. Here, we evaluate GI features in a semiarid city from the perspective of soil ecology through the application of soil nematode community analysis...

Biochar has been shown to influence soil CO and NO emissions following application to soil, but the presence of carbonates in biochars has largely confounded efforts to differentiate among labile and recalcitrant C pools in biochar and establish their timeframe of influence. Understanding the mechanism, magnitude, and duration of biochar C pools' influence on C and N dynamics is imperative to successful implementation of biochar for C sequestration. Here we therefore aim to assess biochar organic and inorganic C pool impacts on CO and NO emissions from soil amended with two untreated biochars, inorganic carbon (as NaCO), acid (HCl) and bicarbonate (NaHCO) extracts of the biochars, and acid and bicarbonate/acid-washed biochars during a 140-d soil incubation...

Water quality deterioration is a problem throughout the globe, especially in China. The Chinese government established national total emission control (TEC) policies related to the nation's surface water quality over the past 10 yr to restore, protect, and promote healthy water quality. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of China's TEC policies by analyzing three water quality constituents (ammonium nitrogen [NH-N], dissolved oxygen [DO], and the permanganate index [COD]) at 73 monitoring stations, which account for most of the surface waters of eastern China...

An emerging poultry manure management practice is in-house windrowing to disinfect the litter. However, this practice is likely to increase emissions of ammonia (NH) and nitrous oxide (NO) from the windrowed litter. The objective of this study was to quantitatively compare NH and NO emissions from broiler houses with and without in-house windrowing. Two broiler houses at a commercial farm were used to compare the NH and NO emissions. Gas emission measurements were conducted continuously and simultaneously for both the control house (without windrowing) and the house with windrowing during the same production periods...

Source nitrogen (N) identification of leachate or groundwater nitrate is complicated by N source mixing and N and oxygen (O) isotope fractionation caused by microbial N transformations. This experiment examined the δN and δO values in leachate collected over 1 yr at 55 cm below raspberry ( L.) plots receiving either synthetic fertilizer (FT) or poultry manure (MT). The large ranges of δN (FT: -2.4 to +8.7‰, MT: +1.6 to +9.6‰) and δO (FT: -9.9 to -0.3‰, MT: -10.9 to +1.7‰) values in leachate collected under crop rows prohibited the reliable identification of the applied N sources on individual sampling dates...

Organic fertilizers are increasingly used in agriculture in Asia and elsewhere. Tracer techniques are desirable to distinguish the fate of nutrients added to agroecosystems with organic fertilizers from those contained in synthetic fertilizers. Therefore, we determined the nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen isotope ratios of nitrogen- and sulfur-bearing compounds in animal- and plant-based organic fertilizers (ABOF and PBOF, respectively) used in South Korea to evaluate whether they are isotopically distinct. The δN values of total and organic nitrogen for ABOF ranged from +7 to +19‰ and were higher than those of PBOF (generally <+6‰)...

Long-term application of feedlot manure to cropland may increase the quantity of soil organic carbon (C) and change its quality, which may influence soil water repellency. The objective was to determine the influence of feedlot manure type (stockpiled vs. composted), bedding material (straw [ST] vs. woodchips [WD]), and application rate (13, 39, or 77 Mg ha) on repellency of a clay loam soil after 17 annual applications. The repellency was determined on all 14 treatments using the water repellency index ( index), the water drop penetration time (WDPT) method, and molarity of ethanol (MED) test...

Agricultural drainage ditches function as first-order streams and affect nutrient management. Soil mesocosms from a ditch featuring a vertical (increasing upward) gradient in iron (Fe) and phosphorus (P) were subjected to hydraulic and soil treatments. These manipulations mimicked aspects of dredging and controlled drainage and inspected the soil release and retention of P. Treatments did not remove P from simulated groundwater. Throughput water either gained in P (lack of dredging, especially under Fe-reducing conditions) or had P concentrations indistinguishable from input water (dredging)...

Onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTSs) can be a source of nitrogen (N) pollution in both surface and ground waters. In metropolitan Atlanta, GA, >26% of homes are on OWTSs. In a previous article, we used the Soil Water Assessment Tool to model the effect of OWTSs on stream flow in the Big Haynes Creek Watershed in metropolitan Atlanta. The objective of this study was to estimate the effect of OWTSs, including failing systems, on nitrate as N (NO-N) load in the same watershed. Big Haynes Creek has a drainage area of 44 km with mainly urban land use (67%), and most of the homes use OWTSs...

Maintaining healthy turfgrass often results in the use of pesticides to manage weed, insect, and disease pests. To identify and understand potential nontarget impacts of pesticide usage while still maintaining attractive and functional turfgrass sites, it is important to improve our understanding of how pesticides degrade in various environments throughout the growing season. Temperature heavily influences microbial community composition and activity, and the microbial community often heavily influences pesticide degradation in soil ecosystems...

In many countries, the main reason for severely restricting or outright banning the land application of class B biosolids is the lack of risk assessment for adverse human health impacts. Among pathogens that are not often studied are helminth ova, including that of the spp. Almost all of the knowledge about the persistence of spp. ova in soils fertilized with biosolids is based on studies developed in North America, Europe, and Asia. These studies have almost always been conducted under temperate climate conditions, which may cause erroneous interpretations when the conclusions are extrapolated to tropical regions such as those found in Brazil...