Basin wide Nitrate-Nitrogen pollution of groundwater, Miyakonojo, Japan, with the relation of the regional Groundwater flow system

Miyakonojo basin is well-known agriculture area in Southern Kyushu, Japan and highly depends on groundwater resources for their everyday use. Local unconfined groundwater aquifer is widely polluted by Nitrate-Nitrogen originated from agriculture. It will become serious problem if this unconfined Nitrate pollution enlarges into the confined aquifer system which is used for local city water source. However, the detailed groundwater flow system between unconfined and confined aquifer system has not been cleared yet. The detailed three dimensional groundwater flow system study has been done by using existing wells in a basin to understand the three dimensional distribution pattern of Nitrate-Nitrogen in the aquifer. The field sampling for unconfined, intermediate and confined groundwater was done in July, 2005 and February, 2006 for about 200 wells to analyze inorganic water chemistry, hydrogen / oxygen stable isotopes and tritium. For the unconfined groundwater, there exists clear difference for the groundwater flow pattern between the eastern and western basin, which is mostly affected by the surface topography. The unconfined groundwater flowed into the confined aquifer at the eastern part of a basin, while in the western part of a basin the unconfined groundwater on a plateau flowed into the confined aquifer somehow, but most part of the unconfined groundwater has been discharge out to small river valleys between plateaus. While for the confined groundwater, the topographic effect has been disappeared and basin scale groundwater flow from the basin margin toward the basin center is dominated. In the unconfined aquifer, basin wide distribution of Nitrate-Nitrogen content has been recognized and it is relatively higher in the western basin where the cattle farming are dominated. While in the confined aquifer, there are some high Nitrate-Nitrogen spots but do not have regional trend. It is considered that some part of the basin has not distributed the welded tuff layers which exist between unconfined and confined aquifers and this may somehow influences the groundwater flow between unconfined and confined aquifers. Also the existing groundwater flow system based on the groundwater potential distribution clearly relates with the denitrification zone in the confined aquifer, where the Nitrate-Nitrogen reduction has been occurred in an aquifer by the organic products and showed the decreasing tendency along the flow line.