RESEARCH ARTICLE
Impact of Nitrogen Fertilization on Soil and Aquifers in the Humid Pampa, Argentina
A. Abril*, L. Roca
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 22
Last Page: 27
Publisher ID: TOASJ-2-22
DOI: 10.2174/1874331500802010022
Article History:
Received Date: 25/02/2008Revision Received Date: 7/04/2008
Acceptance Date: 21/04/2008
Electronic publication date: 6/5/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
There is great concern worldwide about air and water pollution arising from N-fertilizer. Considering the expansion of agriculture and fertilization practices in Argentina, the objective of this study was to determine the effect of Nfertilizers on soil N dynamics and then relationship with nitrate concentration in aquifers. Soil samples were taken during a maize crop cycle in two agricultural farms under different fertilization treatments: UAN (urea, ammonium nitrate and ammonium tiosulfate, 110 kg N ha-1); and UREA (urea, 60 kg N ha-1). UAN and UREA treatment produced an increase in soil nitrate content (from 6 to 550 and 60 mg N kg-1 respectively) and the 71% of aquifers sampled exceeded 45 mg l-1. Our results indicate that uan application produced great N losses and did not increase soil residual N, suggesting that the high amount of nitrates in aquifers would arise from the soil N losses.