• DOI:10.1007/BF01007572
• Corpus ID: 189917368

Contemporary and pre-industrial global reactive nitrogen budgets

@article{Holland1999ContemporaryAP,
  title={Contemporary and pre-industrial global reactive nitrogen budgets},
  author={Elisabeth Holland and Frank J. Dentener and Bobby H. Braswell and James M. Sulzman},
  journal={Biogeochemistry},
  year={1999},
  volume={46},
  pages={7-43}
}

• E. Holland, F. Dentener, +1 author J. Sulzman
• Published 1999
• Environmental Science
• Biogeochemistry

Increases and expansion of anthropogenic emissions of both oxidized nitrogen compounds, NOx, and a reduced nitrogen compound, NH3, have driven an increase in nitrogen deposition. We estimate global NOx and NH3 emissions and use a model of the global troposphere, MOGUNTIA, to examine the pre-industrial and contemporary quantities and spatial patterns of wet and dry NOy and NHx deposition. Pre-industrial wet plus dry NOx and NHx deposition was greatest for tropical ecosystems, related to soil emissions, biomass burning and lightning emissions. Contemporary NOy+NHx wet and dry deposition onto Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperate ecosystems averages more than four times that of preindustrial N deposition and far exceeds contemporary tropical N deposition. All temperate and tropical biomes receive more N via deposition today than pre-industrially. Comparison of contemporary wet deposition model estimates to measurements of wet deposition reveal that modeled and measured wet deposition for both NO3− and NH4+ were quite similar over the U.S. Over Western Europe, the model tended to underestimate wet deposition of NO3− and NH4+ but bulk deposition measurements were comparable to modeled total deposition. For the U.S. and Western Europe, we also estimated N emission and deposition budgets. In the U.S., estimated emissions exceed interpolated total deposition by 3-6 Tg N, suggesting that substantial N is transported offshore and/or the remote and rural location of the sites may fail to capture the deposition of urban emissions. In Europe, by contrast, interpolated total N deposition balances estimated emissions within the uncertainty of each.