Zapata Jamie Gonzalez, Vangipuram Bharadwaj, Dalin Carole, Erfani Tohid
Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, U.K.
Institute for Sustainable Resources, Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, University College London, London WC1H 0NN, U.K.
ACS ES T Eng. 2023 Jul 13;3(8):1112-1124. doi: 10.1021/acsestengg.2c00383. eCollection 2023 Aug 11.
Nitrogen, an essential nutrient for plant growth, is commonly added to food crops in the form of manure and synthetic fertilizers. Fertilizer use has significantly increased in the past decades to meet the food demands from a rising population. Although this has boosted food production, it has come at a cost to the environment. Indeed, excess fertilizer ends up in water bodies, a pollution that causes losses in aquatic biodiversity. Better fertilizer management is therefore essential to maintaining water sustainability. Here, we develop and evaluate a nitrogen water quality trading scheme to address this challenge. Nitrogen trading incentivizes farmers to work together to invest in pollution reduction measures in order to keep nitrogen water pollution levels within a standardized limit. We build a mathematical model to represent the nitrogen trading and use it to assess the pollution reduction, the effect on the crop yield, and economical outcomes. The model is applied among local farms in the agricultural county of Suffolk, eastern England. We calculate the nitrogen load to the river from each farm and incorporate the abatement cost into the model. The results show how nitrogen water pollution could be reduced cost-effectively while simultaneously increasing the benefit for the whole catchment. Although the benefit does not increase for all the farms, the increase in benefit for the whole catchment is enough to compensate for this loss. The surplus benefit is equally distributed between all the farms, thus increasing their overall benefit. We discuss how the proposed trading model can create a platform for farmers to participate and reduce their water pollution.
氮是植物生长必需的养分，通常以粪肥和合成肥料的形式添加到粮食作物中。在过去几十年里，为了满足不断增长的人口对食物的需求，肥料的使用显著增加。尽管这提高了粮食产量，但却给环境带来了代价。事实上，过量的肥料最终进入水体，造成水生生物多样性损失的污染。因此，更好地管理肥料对于维持水资源可持续性至关重要。在此，我们开发并评估一种氮水质交易计划来应对这一挑战。氮交易激励农民共同努力投资于污染减排措施，以便将氮水污染水平控制在标准限度内。我们构建一个数学模型来表示氮交易，并利用它评估污染减排、对作物产量的影响以及经济成果。该模型应用于英格兰东部萨福克郡农业县的当地农场。我们计算每个农场向河流排放的氮负荷，并将减排成本纳入模型。结果表明，如何在有效降低氮水污染的同时，提高整个集水区的效益。虽然并非所有农场的效益都有所增加，但整个集水区效益的增加足以弥补这一损失。剩余效益在所有农场之间平均分配，从而提高了它们的总体效益。我们讨论了所提出的交易模型如何为农民创造一个参与并减少水污染的平台。
