Consequences of changed wetness on riverine nitrogen – human impact on retention vs. natural climatic variability

Abstract

The HBV-N model was used for a scenario analysis of changes in nitrogen retention and transport caused by alterations of wetness due to land drainage, lowering of lakes, building of dams and climatic variability in a river basin in south-central Sweden (1885–1994). In general, dams were situated in locations more favourable for retention, compared to the lowered lakes. Rather modest conversions of water bodies only changed nitrogen transport by about 3%. The 180-times-larger increase of (mainly) tile-drained agricultural land had, according to simulations, increased the nitrogen transport by 17%, due to reduced retention. However, compared to human-induced alteration of the landscape N retention, the choice of 10-year periods of climatological data had the overriding effect on the calculated nitrogen transport. Weather-induced variations resulted in a 13% difference in nitrogen retention between various 10-year periods. When the model was driven by climatological data from the driest 10-year period (1905–1914), the estimated average annual load was only half of that obtained with climatological data from the wettest 10-year period (1975–1984).