Agricultural Pollutant Penetration and Steady State in Thick

Aquifers

Abstract

The leakage of pollutants from agricultural lands to aquifers has increased greatly,
driven by increasing fertilizer and pesticide use. Because this increase is recent,
ground water pollutant concentrations, loads, and exports may also be increasing as
pollutants penetrate more deeply into aquifers. We established in an aquifer profile
a ground water recharge and pollutant leakage chronology in an agricultural
landscape where 30 m of till blankets a 57-m thick sandstone aquifer. Pollutant
concentrations increased from older ground water (1963) at the aquifer base to
younger ground water (1985) at its top, a signal of increasing pollutant leakage.
Nitrate-N increased from 0.9 to 13.2 mg/L, implying that leakage increased from 1.9
to 16.5 kg/ha/year. Nitrate load and export could increase from 130% to 230%
before reaching a steady state in 20 to 40 years. Chloride increases were similar.
Pesticide residues alachlor ethane sulfonic acid (ESA), metolachlor ESA, and
atrazine residues partially penetrated the aquifer profile. Their concentration-age-
date patterns exhibited an initial increase and then a leveling corresponding to the
timing of product adoption and leveling of demand. Unlike NO 3, projecting pesticide
residue steady states is complicated by the phasing in and out of pesticide products
over time; for example, neither alachlor nor atrazine is currently used in the area,
and newer products, which have not had time to transit to the aquifer, have been
adopted. The circumstances that resulted in the lack of a pollutant steady state are
not rare; thus, the lack of steady states in agricultural region aquifers may not be
uncommon.

Conclusion

The pesticide residue leakage chronology hence suggests that pesticide residue
penetration was incomplete and that degradation was probably not limiting. Unlike
NO3, projecting pesticide residue futures is perhaps made futile by the phasing in
and out of pesticide products over time. For instance, for the pesticide residues
detected, alachlor use peaked and began to decline in the late 1980s and
effectively disappeared by 2002; atrazine use peaked at the same time (Nehring
and Grube 2004) and then was banned from use in the Springfield Corners area in
1993. Ultimately, unless these materials are reintroduced, the steady-state
concentrations of their residues will be zero. Wisconsin metolachlor usage has
remained more or less steady since the 1980s; so perhaps a steady-state average
aquifer concentration of metolachlor residues will be near the 0.4 lg/L found in the
profile in the 1980s. Conversely, the use of products such as acetochlor and
glyphosate has risen since the 1990s, and undoubtedly other products will come to
market in the future.

Summary
The leakage chronology at Springfield Corners displayed increasing pollutant
leakage coinciding with an era of increasing agricultural inputs. Net NO 3-N
concentrations in ground water recharge increased from 0.9 mg/L in 1963 to 13.2
mg/L in 1985, and were still increasing at 0.50 mg/L/year at the end of the
chronology. These concentrations correspond to an increase in net NO 3-N leakage
rates from 1.9 to 16.5 kg/ha/year during the same period. Leakage of NO 3-N could
plausibly reach 24.5 kg/ha/year before a steady state is achieved. As a result of
increasing NO3 leakage, a limited ability for denitrification to control NO 3, and the
time required for modern ground water to penetrate the aquifer thickness, aquifer
NO3 load and export could increase by 130% to 230% before a steady state is
reached in 20 to 40 years. Chloride leakage, which we attribute mainly to increasing
KCl fertilizer, grew similarly. The ground water stratigraphy approach was also able
to establish what pesticide residues leaked to ground water (alachlor ESA,
metolachlor ESA, and those of atrazine), their leakage chronology, the degree to
which they penetrated the aquifer, and that their in-aquifer degradation was slow or
lacking. However, projecting pesticide residue futures and steady states is
complicated by the phasing in and out of pesticide products over time; for instance,
neither alachlor nor atrazine is currently used in the study area, and newer
products, which have not had sufficient time to transit to the aquifer, have been
adopted.

Conclusion
Pollutant penetration may be far from a steady state in the aquifers of some
agricultural areas. The cause is that ground water residence times are frequently
long compared with the relatively recent increase in pollutant leakage from
agricultural landscapes brought about by increasing fertilizer and pesticide use.
Characteristics of areas importantly far from a steady state may include the
following: (1) prevailing farming systems involve large amounts of inputs that offer
a potential pollutant source; (2) moisture in excess of evapotranspiration is
available as leaching agent; (3) landscape runoff is conducted mainly by subsurface
flow through an aquifer to drainages (i.e., overland runoff and tile drain flow are
small or lacking); (4) large thicknesses of sediments conduct landscape runoff to
discharges resulting in long subsurface residence times; (5) conditions supporting
denitrification and pesticide degradation are absent or slow, perhaps due to a lack
of solid phase or dissolved electron acceptors. As these characteristics are not rare,
agricultural locales with aquifers lacking pollutant steady states may not be
uncommon. Progression toward a steady state at local scales may be manifested as
increasing pollutant concentrations in drinking water. At large scales, the
progression could be manifested by increased surface water pollutant loads with
corresponding ecological harms, such as an intensification of marine hypoxia.