Effects of watershed land use on nitrogen concentrations and δ15 Nitrogen in groundwater

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2005. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Biogeochemistry 77 (2006): 199-215, doi:10.1007/s10533-005-1036-2.Eutrophication is a major agent of change affecting freshwater, estuarine, and marine systems. It is largely driven by transportation of nitrogen from natural and anthropogenic sources. Research is needed to quantify this nitrogen delivery and to link the delivery to specific land-derived sources. In this study we measured nitrogen concentrations and δ15N values in seepage water entering three freshwater ponds and six estuaries on Cape Cod, Massachusetts and assessed how they varied with different types of land use. Nitrate concentrations and δ15N values in groundwater reflected land use in developed and pristine watersheds. In particular, watersheds with larger populations delivered larger nitrate loads with higher δ15N values to receiving waters. The enriched δ15N values confirmed nitrogen loading model results identifying wastewater contributions from septic tanks as the major N source. Furthermore, it was apparent that N coastal sources had a relatively larger impact on the N loads and isotopic signatures than did inland N sources further upstream in the watersheds. This finding suggests that management priorities could focus on coastal sources as a first course of action. This would require management constraints on a much smaller population.This work was supported by funds from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant Program, from the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology, from Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to Applied Science Associates, Narragansett, RI, as well as from Palmer/McLeod and NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve Fellowships to Kevin Kroeger. This work is the result of research sponsored by NOAA National Sea Grant College Program Office, Department of Commerce, under Grant No. NA86RG0075, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant Project No. R/M-40

A novel approach to studying the effects of temperature on soil biogeochemistry using a thermal gradient bar

The temperature dependence of chemical reaction rates and microbial metabolism mean that temperature is a key factor regulating soil trace gas emissions and hydrochemistry. Here we evaluated a novel approach for studying the thermal response of soils, by examining the effects of temperature on gas emissions and hydrochemistry in (a) peat and (b) soil from a Sitka spruce plantation. A thermal gradient was applied along an aluminium bar, allowing soil to be incubated contemporaneously from 2 to 18 °C. The approach demonstrated clear differences in the biogeochemical responses of the two soil types to warming. The peat showed no significant emission of CH4 at temperatures below 6 °C, while above 6 °C, a marked increase in the rate of release was apparent up to 15 °C (Q10 = 2.5) with emissions being similar between 15 and 18 °C. Conversely, CH4 emissions from the forest soil did not respond to warming. Nitrate availability in the peat decreased by 90% between 2 and 18 °C (P < 0.01), whereas concentrations in the forest soil did not respond. Sulphate availability in the peat decreased significantly with warming (60%, P < 0.01), while the forest soil showed the opposite response (a 30% increase, P < 0.01). Conventionally, thermal responses are studied by incubating individual soil samples at different temperatures, involving lengthy preparation and facilities to incubate samples at different temperatures simultaneously. Data collected on a given thermal response is usually limited and thus interpolated or extrapolated. The thermal gradient method overcomes these problems, is simple and flexible, and can be adapted for a wide range of sample types (not confined to soil). Such apparatus may prove useful in the optimization of management practices to mitigate the effects of climate change, as thermal responses will differ depending on land use and soil type

Quantum efficiency measurements in the swept charge device CCD236

The e2v technologies plc. CCD236 is a Swept Charge Device (SCD) designed as a large area (20 mm × 20 mm) soft X-ray detector for spectroscopy in the range 0.8 keV to 10 keV. It benefits from improvements in design over the previous generation, the e2v CCD54, such as: a 4 times increased detector area, a reduction in split X-ray events due to the 100 μm × 100 μm `pixel' size, and improvements to radiation hardness. The CCD236 will be used in India's Chandrayaan-2 Large Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) instrument and China's Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT). Measurements of the Quantum Efficiency (QE) have been obtained relative to a NIST calibrated photodiode over the energy range 0.2 keV to 1.9 keV, using the BESSY II X-ray synchrotron in Berlin. Two X-ray event counting methods are described and compared, and QE for soft X-ray interaction is reported. Uniformity of QE across the device is also investigated at energies between 0.52 keV and 1.5 keV in different areas of the detector. This work will enable the actual number of photons incident on the detectors to be calculated, thus ensuring that the CCD236 detectors provide valuable scientific data during use. By comparing the QE methods in this paper with the event processing techniques to be used with CLASS, an estimate of the instrument-specific QE for CLASS can be provided

Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Particle Energization in Space Plasmas Using On-Board Wave-Particle Correlator Instrumentation

A leap forward in our understanding of particle energization in plasmas throughout the heliosphere is essential to answer longstanding questions in heliophysics, including the heating of the solar corona, acceleration of the solar wind, and energization of particles that lead to observable phenomena, such as the Earth’s aurora. The low densities and high temperatures of typical heliospheric environments lead to weakly collisional plasma conditions. Under these conditions, the energization of particles occurs primarily through collisionless interactions between the electromagnetic fields and the individual plasma particles with energies characteristic of a particular interaction. To understand how the plasma heating and particle acceleration impacts the macroscopic evolution of the heliosphere, impacting phenomena such as extreme space weather, it is critical to understand these collisionless wave-particle interactions on the characteristic ion and electron kinetic timescales. Such understanding requires high-cadence measurements of both the electromagnetic fields and the three-dimensional particle velocity distributions. Although existing instrument technology enables these measurements, a major challenge to maximize the scientific return from these measurements is the limited amount of data that can be transmitted to the ground due to telemetry constraints. A valuable, but underutilized, approach to overcome this limitation is to compute on-board correlations of the maximum-cadence field and particle measurements to improve the sampling time by several orders of magnitude. Here we review the fundamentals of the innovative field-particle correlation technique, present a formulation of the technique that can be implemented as an on-board wave-particle correlator, and estimate results that can be achieved with existing instrumental capabilities for particle velocity distribution measurements. Copyright © 2022 Howes, Verniero, Larson, Bale, Kasper, Goetz, Klein, Whittlesey, Livi, Rahmati, Chen, Wilson, Alterman and Wicks.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]