Nitrate Variability in Groundwater of North Carolina using Monitoring and Private Well Data Models

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Environ Sci Technol
• Personal Author:
  Messier, Kyle P. ; Kane, Evan ; Bolich, Rick ; Serre, Marc L.
• Description:
  Nitrate (NO3-) is a widespread contaminant of groundwater and surface water across the United States that has deleterious effects to human and ecological health. This study develops a model for predicting point-level groundwater NO3- at a state scale for monitoring wells and private wells of North Carolina. A land use regression (LUR) model selection procedure is developed for determining nonlinear model explanatory variables when they are known to be correlated. Bayesian Maximum Entropy (BME) is used to integrate the LUR model to create a LUR-BME model of spatial/temporal varying groundwater NO3- concentrations. LUR-BME results in a leave-one-out cross-validation r2 of 0.74 and 0.33 for monitoring and private wells, effectively predicting within spatial covariance ranges. Results show significant differences in the spatial distribution of groundwater NO3- contamination in monitoring versus private wells; high NO3- concentrations in the southeastern plains of North Carolina; and wastewater treatment residuals and swine confined animal feeding operations as local sources of NO3- in monitoring wells. Results are of interest to agencies that regulate drinking water sources or monitor health outcomes from ingestion of drinking water. Lastly, LUR-BME model estimates can be integrated into surface water models for more accurate management of nonpoint sources of nitrogen.
• Subjects:
  Animals Bayes Theorem Entropy Environmental Monitoring Groundwater Humans Models, Theoretical Nitrates Nonlinear Dynamics Regression Analysis Reproducibility Of Results Swine Time Factors Water Pollutants, Chemical

  More +
• Source:
  Environ Sci Technol. 2014; 48(18):10804-10812.
• Pubmed ID:
  25148521
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC4165464
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  2T42OH008673/OH/NIOSH CDC HHS/United States ; P30 ES010126/ES/NIEHS NIH HHS/United States ; T32ES007018/ES/NIEHS NIH HHS/United States
• Place as Subject:
  North Carolina
• Volume:
  48
• Issue:
  18
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:9f53fb2e2fcea1405a5f9ddf760fe97f55fed21610434d7565e8b5a2ca1278e3
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/32986/cdc_32986_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 3.75 MB ]