Nitrate Uptake Kinetics and Correlation Analysis in an Agricultural Drainage Ditch

Abstract

To investigate the whole-reach nitrate (NO3--N) uptake dynamics in a headwater agricultural stream, we performed five pulse tracer additions of a reactive solute (as KNO3) and a conservative solute (as NaBr) in an agricultural drainage ditch in Hefei district, Chaohu Lake basin, from October 2016 to April 2017. The TASCC (tracer additions for spiraling curve characterization) approach and Michaelis-Menten (M-M) method were applied for the simulation of NO3--N uptake dynamics. Results showed that the ambient areal rate of total NO3--N uptake Uamb varied from 11.40 to 69.13 μg ·(m2 ·s)-1 with an average of 34.45 μg ·(m2 ·s)-1, and the ambient uptake velocity Vf-amb averaged 0.24 mm ·s-1 and varied from 0.07 to 0.43 mm ·s-1 across three well-mixed sub-reaches in the study. The ambient uptake length Sw-amb averaged 199.06 m with a range from 92.51 to 405.74 m, which was much smaller than the length of the drainage ditch (about 2.5 km), suggesting that the agricultural drainage ditch had a high potential for NO3--N retention. Generally, the M-M model fit the NO3--N uptake dynamics well, and the maximum uptake Umax ranged from 158 to 1280 μg ·(m2 ·s)-1 with a mean of 631.13 μg ·(m2 ·s)-1. The half saturation constant Km ranged from 0.16 to 5.52 mg ·L-1 with a mean of 1.46 mg ·L-1. According to correlation analysis, Sw-amb was negatively correlated with NO3--Namb, and Uambwas significantly positively correlated with NO3--Namb, while other nutrient spiraling metrics were not correlated with the NO3--N ambient concentration. Hydrological conditions had no distinct effect on the NO3--N retention, but both the width variability Фw and variability in cross-sectional area ФA were significantly correlated with most of the nutrient spiraling metrics, indicating that geomorphic features in the drainage ditch evidently impacted NO3--N uptake.