Country nitrogen footprints: Comparisons, drivers, and opportunities for reduction
Abstract
Consumption is a major driver for nitrogen use and loss to the environment. A nitrogen footprint is a metric that connects resource consumption with reactive nitrogen (all species nitrogen except N2) losses to the environment. Nitrogen footprint tools have been developed at a range of scales: countries (consumer-level personal footprint), institutions (colleges, universities, businesses: www.unshimap.org), urban areas (Baltimore city), watersheds (Chesapeake Bay), and meals. A companion metric was recently proposed to connect the nitrogen footprint to a spatial scale: NrSI (reactive nitrogen spatial intensity). Together these tools can educate users about their contribution to nitrogen pollution, identify nitrogen reduction strategies, pinpoint hotspots of nitrogen losses, and track nitrogen footprints over time. This study will present ten country nitrogen footprints to assess and compare consumer-level activities that contribute to regional and international nitrogen pollution.
Country nitrogen footprints from the following continents will be presented: North America (USA); Europe (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom); Asia (China, Japan); Oceania (Australia); and Africa (Tanzania). The spatial nitrogen footprint will be explored using the NrSI metric for four countries: USA, Australia, Netherlands, and Japan. The footprint and NrSI results will be compared to assess regional variation in nitrogen footprints and to identify common and unique drivers. Nitrogen reduction scenarios will be assessed for all country footprints as appropriate, including 1) replacing 25% of meat with vegetable protein; 2) reducing protein consumption to the required level; 3) cutting food waste by half; 3) implementing advanced wastewater treatment; 4) attaining 100% renewable energy for purchased electricity; and 5) replacing 25% of vehicles with renewable energy electric vehicles. Finally, this study will explore the effectiveness and potential of the nitrogen footprint and NrSI for communicating and reducing global reactive nitrogen pollution.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMGC21B..05L
- Keywords:
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- 0402 Agricultural systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0470 Nutrients and nutrient cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1615 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE