High-resolution monitoring of nutrients in groundwater and surface waters: process understanding, quantification of loads and concentrations, and management applications

Abstract

Abstract. Four sessions on "Monitoring Strategies: temporal trends in groundwater and surface water quality and quantity" at the EGU conferences in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 and a special issue of HESS form the background for this overview of the current state of high-resolution monitoring of nutrients. The overview includes a summary of technologies applied in high-frequency monitoring of nutrients in the special issue. Moreover, we present a new assessment of the objectives behind high-frequency monitoring as classified into three main groups: (i) improved understanding of the underlying hydrological, chemical, and biological processes (PU); (ii) quantification of true nutrient concentrations and loads (Q); and (iii) operational management, including evaluation of the effects of mitigation measures (M). The contributions in the special issue focus on the implementation of high-frequency monitoring within the broader context of policy making and management of water in Europe for support of EU directives such as the Water Framework Directive, the Groundwater Directive, and the Nitrates Directive. The overview presented enabled us to highlight the typical objectives encountered in the application of highfrequency monitoring and to reflect on future developments and research needs in this growing field of expertise.

Monitoring the riverine pulse: Applying high‐frequency nitrate data to advance integrative understanding of biogeochemical and hydrological processes

“…Widespread deployment of nutrient sensor systems has resulted in a plethora of investigations that have explored in unprecedented temporal detail, concentration–discharge relations, in‐stream processes, the coupling of hydrologic and biogeochemical processes, and the role of climate variation on concentrations and loads in surface waters (Rode et al, ; van Geer, Kronvang, & Broers, ). This study presents a review and synthesis of many of these recent applications of high‐frequency in situ measurements in stream and river ecosystems.…”

Seasonal variability of stream water quality response to storm events captured using high-frequency and multi-parameter data

“…Such constraints are now relaxed thanks to the development of nearly-continuous monitoring techniques (Kirchner et al, 2004;Ockenden et al, 2016;Rode et al, 2016;van Geer et al, 2016;Blaen et al, 2016;Ruhala and Zarnetske, 2017) that enable the measurements of nonhydrological parameters such as turbidity (Lawler et al, 2006), electrical conductivity (Penna et al, 2015), or concentrations of Nitrate (NO 3 ) or mineral Nitrogen (N), Dissolved or Total Organic Carbon (TOC), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), and Phosphorus (P) (Jordan et al, 2007;Halliday et al, 2013;Bowes et al, 2015;Jeong et al, 2012;Lloyd et al, 2016;Ockenden et al, 2016, Feinson et al, 2016, Sherriff et al, 2016.…”

Drivers of nitrogen and phosphorus dynamics in a groundwater-fed urban catchment revealed by high frequency monitoring

“…but can easily miss important nutrient transport and processing phenomena (Rozemeijer et al, 2010;Rode et al, 2016;Toor et al, 2017). The countermeasures to control eutrophication have been hampered because of limited knowledge of N and P dynamics, for instance its response to changing weather conditions, land use, etc (van Geer et al, 2016). In recently years, high frequency technology has proved to be a way to understand nutrient dynamics (Rode et al, 2016;Van Geer et al, 2016;Bieroza et al, 2018).…”

“…The countermeasures to control eutrophication have been hampered because of limited knowledge of N and P dynamics, for instance its response to changing weather conditions, land use, etc (van Geer et al, 2016). In recently years, high frequency technology has proved to be a way to understand nutrient dynamics (Rode et al, 2016;Van Geer et al, 2016;Bieroza et al, 2018). Due to the abundant information offered by this technology, combined methodologies have been developed to quantitively understand the in stream hydrochemistry of nutrients (Miller et al, 2016, Van der Grift et al, 2016, Duncan et al, 2017.…”