Distribution of atmospheric reactive nitrogen at two sites of different socio- economic characteristics in IndoGangetic Plain(IGP) region, India.

Abstract:

In India, most of the human population lives in rural areas. People depends on agriculture products to meet the demand of food supply. In order to get higher yield of agriculture and food product, increased practice of fertilizer application has added extra burden of nutrients especially, the reactive nitrogen (Nr) species viz NH₃ and NO_x. Growing energy demands has resulted in increased emissions of NOx from coal combustion in thermal power plant and the petroleum combustion in transport sector. In addition, biomass burning in traditional cooking and heating has become significant source of NH₃ and NO_x in Indian region.

Significance of the study lies in the fact that increasing Nr emissions have adverse impact on human health, plant, soil and water bodies directly and to see the effect, knowledge of emission and deposition for Nr at different sites. Hence, the selection of the sites for present study was done very carefully. Delhi city and Mai village were selected to represent typical characteristics of high and low socioeconomic region respectively. Delhi is the capital of India, known for higher income group urban cluster where rural site having agricultural dominance has its importance in Indian scenario because still in India our primary source of income is agriculture.

Atmospheric abundance of two major gaseous inorganic (Nr) species i.e NH₃ and NO₂ has been measured for one year, on monthly basis. Average concentrations of NH₃ at urban and rural site have been recorded as 40.4 ±16.8 and 51.57 ±22.8 µg/m³ respectively. The average concentrations of NO₂ have been recorded as 24.4 ±13.5 and 18.8 ± 12.6 µg/m³ at urban & rural site respectively. Study, also presents seasonal and diurnal variations of gaseous reactive nitrogen species at urban & rural sites to observe the contribution of different the sources of atmospheric Nr. Dynamics of Nr at both sites will be discussed in details at the conference.