Midwestern soils are among the most productive in the world, thanks in part to extensive tile drainage systems that remove excess water from crop fields. But water isn’t the only thing flowing through tile drains. Nitrogen moves along with soil water into drainage ditches, streams and ultimately into the Mississippi River Basin, where the nutrient contributes to massive algal blooms and hypoxic conditions that impact aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Yinchao Hu
Zhongjie Yu
