Abstract
The state of Iowa is known for its high-yield agriculture, supporting rising demands for food and fuel production. But this productivity is also a significant contributor of nitrogen loading to the Mississippi River basin causing the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The delivery of nutrients, especially nitrogen, from the upper Mississippi River basin, is a function, not only of agricultural activity, but also of hydrology. Thus, it is important to consider extreme weather conditions, such as drought and flooding, and understand the effects of weather variability on Iowa’s food-energy-water (IFEW) system and nitrogen loading to the Mississippi River from Iowa. In this work, the simulation decomposition approach is implemented using the extended IFEW model with a crop-weather model to better understand the cause-and-effect relationships of weather parameters on the nitrogen export from the state of Iowa. July temperature and precipitation are used as varying input weather parameters with normal and log normal distributions, respectively, and subdivided to generate regular and dry weather conditions. It is observed that most variation in the soil nitrogen surplus lies in the regular condition, while the dry condition produces the highest soil nitrogen surplus for the state of Iowa.
Highlights
Nutrients, such as nitrogen (N), are necessary in farming for raising crop and forage productivity, but they can bring potential harm to the socioeconomic system
Dry distillers’ grain soluble (DDGS) that is produced during the ethanol production process and commercial fertilizers provide protein to animals and fertility to soil in the animal agriculture and agricultural domains, respectively
The current work focuses on understanding the effects of weather parameters onLow the nitrogen surplus [0–5)
Summary
Nutrients, such as nitrogen (N), are necessary in farming for raising crop and forage productivity, but they can bring potential harm to the socioeconomic system. A hypoxic zone is a phenomenon where low dissolved oxygen (hypoxia) occurs in aquatic environments, which is primarily caused by excess nutrients running off or leaching from the contributing watershed. Over 400 hypoxic zones have been found in the world and the problem of hypoxia is worsening [1]. In the US, the environment and socioeconomic system of the Gulf of Mexico are impacted by hypoxia which has one of the largest hypoxic zones in the world [2]. Nitrogen (N) is one of the major contributors to the creation of the hypoxic zone of the Gulf of Mexico through the nitrates (NO3 ) lost from watersheds within the Mississippi River Basin, which moves downstream to the Gulf of Mexico [3]. Studies show that the state of Iowa, one of the major producers of corn, soybean, ethanol, and animal products, contributes a considerable amount of nitrogen loads to the Mississippi
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