Ahmed Elwan

Citation

Thesis Title
Accounting of nitrogen attenuation in agricultural catchments

Read article at Massey Research Online:

The transport and fate of nitrate that leaches from the root zone of farms via ground waters to receiving surface waters, is poorly understood, in spite of its importance for targeted and effective water quality management. Mr. Elwan demonstrated that the influence of land use on river soluble inorganic nitrogen concentrations was outweighed by other catchment characteristics such as soil type and hydrological indices. He developed and applied a framework to quantify the capacity of the catchment to reduce nitrogen and developed a hydrogeologic-based model to predict river loads by accounting for the spatial distribution of the nitrogen reduction capacities of soils and rocks. His findings will be instrumental in the development of models and planning tools to reduce the detrimental impacts of agriculture, by aligning spatially intensive land use practices with high nitrogen reduction pathways in sensitive agricultural catchments.

Supervisors
Associate Professor Ranvir Singh
Dr Brent Clothier
Dr Jon Roygard
Professor David Horne