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TECHNICAL REPORT
Waste Management

Denitrification at a Long-Term Forested Land Treatment System in the Piedmont of Georgia

^a Daniel B. Warnell School of Forest Resources, Athens, GA 30602
^b Dep. of Crop and Soil Sciences, The Univ. of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602
^c USDA Forest Service, Northeast Research Station, P.O. Box 267, Irvine, PA 16329
^d Nutter and Associates, 1073 S. Milledge Ave., Athens, GA 30605

* Corresponding author (lmorris{at}arches.uga.edu)

Received for publication March 13, 2000. Spray irrigation of forested land can provide an effective system for nutrient removal and treatment of municipal wastewater. Evolution of N₂ + N₂O from denitrifying activity is an important renovation pathway for N applied to forested land treatment systems. Federal and state guidance documents for design of forested land treatment systems indicate the expected range for denitrification to be up to 25% of applied N, and most forest land treatment systems are designed using values from 15 to 20% of applied N. However, few measurements of denitrification following long-term wastewater applications at forested land treatment sites exist. In this study, soil N₂ + N₂O–N evolution was directly measured at four different landscape positions (hilltop, midslope, toe-slope, and riparian zone) in a forested land treatment facility in the Georgia Piedmont that has been operating for more than 13 yr. Denitrification rates within effluent-irrigated areas were significantly greater than rates in adjacent nonirrigated buffer zones. Rates of N₂ + N₂O–N evolved from soil in irrigated forests ranged from 5 to 10 kg ha^-1 yr^-1 N on the three upland landscape positions and averaged 38 kg ha^-1 yr^-1 N within the riparian zone. The relationship between measured riparian zone denitrification rates and soil physical and chemical properties was poor. The best relationship was with soil temperature, with an r² of 0.18. Overall, on a landscape position weighted basis, only 2.4% of the wastewater-applied N was lost through denitrification.

Abbreviations: PVC, polyvinyl chloride

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