Climate Change Is Hurting Forests' Ability To Filter Agricultural Nitrate Pollution
Animal waste and nitrogen-based agricultural fertilizers contribute to nitrate runoff, which ends up in creeks, streams, rain and, eventually, water systems. Nitrate, that mix of nitrogen and oxygen, can cause serious health problems if it’s too concentrated.
The best defense is filtering, which forests are great at doing. But a new study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service suggests forests are falling behind, and heavy rains brought on by climate change are making it worse.
“They always say the solution to pollution is dilution,” said Theresa Davidson, a USDA Forest Wildlife and Fisheries Biologist at the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. When water enters a forest, either through rain or runoff, the soil, leaves and trees absorb things and make the water cleaner than when it came in.
But 21 years of data from more than 100 streams across 20 states — including Missouri, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana — showed an increasing amount of severe storms and floods created times when the water moved too fast and hampered forests’ ability to filter nitrate, according to Stephen Sebestyen, a research hydrologist with the Forest Service.
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/climate-change-hurting-forests-ability-filter-agricultural-nitrate-pollution