Nandita Basu’s nitrate research balances budget

Nandita Basu, from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, along with her doctoral student Kim Van Meter, published the first direct evidence of a large-scale nitrogen legacy in the Mississippi River Basin from agricultural runoff.

The March 2016 article in the journal Environmental Research Letters revealed that agricultural soils can act as a nitrogen sink, filling in a component of the nitrogen budget which had long been missing. This nitrogen legacy problem could impact drinking water sources in some communities, contributing to health problems.

The research was highlighted by the mainstream and science media in a number of locations, including Newsweek and an interview on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks.

Read more about the study's impact in "Fertilizer applied to fields today will pollute water for decades" by Waterloo Science.