Journal
INTERNATIONAL SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION RESEARCH
Volume 4, Issue 3, Pages 230-236Publisher
KEAI PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.iswcr.2016.07.003
Keywords
Nitrogen; Compost; Modeling; Rain simulation; Leaching; Nutrients
Categories
Funding
- California Department of Transportation [65A0236]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Composted organic materials are applied to help restore disturbed soils, speed revegetation, and control erosion; these changes are generally beneficial for stormwater quality. Ensuring that nutrient release from compost is adequate for plant needs without degrading stormwater quality is important since composts release nitrogen at variable rates (1-3% of total N/yr) and the leaching process can extend for many years. The aim of this work was to understand the effect of compost age on the extent and rates of nitrogen release by conducting detailed rainfall simulation studies of one compost type at three different ages. Models describing temporal changes in nitrogen release to runoff during a single storm and across multiple storms were developed and applied to the runoff data. Nitrogen content (%) and bulk density of compost increased with the increase in compost age and total nitrogen release decreased with increasing compost age. The three rain simulations (storms) performed on each of the three compost ages show that nitrogen release declined each day of the repeated daily storms. A first-order kinetic model was used to estimate the amount of nitrogen remaining on compost after several storms. (C) 2016 International Research and Training Center on Erosion and Sedimentation and China Water and Power Press. Production and Hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available