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Sustainable nitrogen management strategies based on nitrogen flow in urban human system

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Abstract

Urban nitrogen discharge has become an important factor leading to urban water environment deterioration, water crisis, and frequent air pollution. Human consumption is the driving force of nitrogen flow and the core of urban nitrogen research. Based on the process of nitrogen flow in the urban human system, combined with the relevant United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and taking Dar es Salaam as an example, we established a generic analytical framework for sustainable nitrogen management and put forward the strategies of sustainable nitrogen management in the urban human system. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) Waste nitrogen discharge affected the environment quality. 5286 t of N (5095 t of N-NH3, 86 t of N-N2O, and 105 t of N-NOx) was emitted into the atmosphere that affected air quality. 9304 t of N was discharged into surface water and 203 t of N was leaked, which had a negative impact on the prevention and control of surface water pollution. And 8334 t of N pose a potential threat to environmental quality. (2) Nitrogen management in Dar es Salaam faced huge challenges. From the perspective of nitrogen flow of the urban human system, the diet structure and household energy structure need to be optimized, and food waste is serious. Sewage treatment and garbage treatment are seriously insufficient, and the corresponding technologies are backward. In order to solve the existing problems of nitrogen flow in the urban human system and include sustainable nitrogen management under future challenges of growing population and economy, we proposed strategies including healthy diet guidance, reducing food waste, detailed assessment of household nitrogen accumulation, transformation of household energy structure to low nitrogen emission energy, increasing nitrogen recycling ratio, and infrastructure improvement of sewage treatment and garbage treatment, hence contributing to the achievement of related SDGs.

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Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for reviewing this paper.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFE0105900) and the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (42001133).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography & Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Chuanhe Xiong, Zheng Guo, Sophia Shuang Chen, Qun Gao, Hengpeng Li & Weizhong Su

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Zheng Guo

  3. Research Centre of Urban Sustainable Development/School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Zheng Guo & Sophia Shuang Chen

  4. Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute, P.O. Box 750, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

    Ismael Aaron Kimirei

Authors
  1. Chuanhe Xiong
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  2. Zheng Guo
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  3. Sophia Shuang Chen
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  4. Qun Gao
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  5. Ismael Aaron Kimirei
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  6. Hengpeng Li
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  7. Weizhong Su
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Contributions

Chuanhe Xiong: data curation, methodology, writing—original draft, validation. Zheng Guo: visualization. Sophia Shuang Chen: writing—reviewing and editing. Qun Gao: supervision. Ismael Aaron Kimirei: investigation. Hengpeng Li: writing—reviewing and editing. Weizhong Su: writing—reviewing and editing.

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Correspondence to Chuanhe Xiong.

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Responsible Editor: Baojing Gu

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary file 1: Table S1

. Consumption of main daily necessities in Dar es Salaam. Table S2. Household waste and waste water treatment in Dar es Salaam. Table S3. Nitrogen concentrations of main daily necessities. Table S4. Emission coefficients of household fuel (Unit: g/kg). Table S5. Directions of the nitrogen flow of human metabolism (Unit: %). Table S6. Destination ratio of nitrogen in urban feces and urine (Unit: %). Table S7. Equation of calculating N. Questionnaire S1. Dar es Salaam Residents' Living Consumption Questionnaire.

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Xiong, C., Guo, Z., Chen, S.S. et al. Sustainable nitrogen management strategies based on nitrogen flow in urban human system. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 52410–52420 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-26047-9

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