Review on Groundwater Nitrate Contamination: Causes, Effects and Remedies : A Guideline for Efficient Management Strategies

Fazal Abul, Imaizumi Masayuki, Ishida Satoshi, Kawachi Toshihiko, Tsuchihara Takeo, Takeuchi Junichiro, Alam Badiul Hasan Abul

doi:10.7132/jrcsa.kj00000795202

Literatures are reviewed to give an overview of the causes, effects and remedies of groundwater nitrate contamination. It is evident that groundwater nitrate contamination is a worldwide problem, which needs to be controlled because of its implications on human health. Many environmental, geological, hydrological and agricultural factors are associated with groundwater nitrate contamination. Anthropogenic sources, mainly due to application of excess nitrogen-based fertilizer to the agricultural fields, livestock manure, and uncontrolled septic tanks, cause nitrate contamination. As a remedy of the problem, treatment of contaminated water may be a solution, but treatment process is expensive and all nitrates cannot be removed from the water by any of the techniques. Therefore, rather than nitrate removal from contaminated water, protection of groundwater from potential contamination is preferred. A location specific management model is indeed needed, which establishes the relationship between the management indicators and the groundwater nitrate concentration. Literatures show that usual processes of managing nitrate-contaminated aquifers are: to identify the sources and causes of contamination and then to find out a management model either by aquifer vulnerability analyses or simulation technique. However, in most of the cases it is very difficult to construct a definite correlation between the groundwater nitrate concentrations and aquifer vulnerability potential indicators, which limits management of nitrate-contaminated aquifers using the vulnerability map. On the other hand, groundwater nitrate simulation is also complicated due to the complexity of nitrate leaching flux estimation. Most of the nitrate simulation models are physically-based, which require many input parameters, thus limiting their actual field application. On the contrary, there are very few conceptual models requiring less data, but their predictive capability with regard of assessing the impacts of alternative management practices is questionable. To overcome these problems we must have to find out alternative techniques. For instance, incorporating Artificial Neural Network (ANN) in vulnerability analyses or developing nitrate leaching model of conceptual quasi-physical type may be a solution.

Review on Groundwater Nitrate Contamination: Causes, Effects and Remedies : A Guideline for Efficient Management Strategies

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