Amount Requested: $500,000
The Environmental Research grant is administered by Cornell's North American Nitrogen Center. The program seeks to gain a better understanding of the sources and sinks of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment in a large rural watershed of mixed land use. Ultimately, the research will lead to a better understanding of the controls on nutrient pollution –– particularly nitrogen pollution –– in rural landscapes, and to insights on sustaining agriculture in the Northeast in a manner that harmonizes with environmental quality.  It will also show how climate variability and climate change influence the fluxes of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediments from the rural landscape.  This research is necessary for New York State to meet its obligations in the Chesapeake Bay Program while allowing agriculture to continue in the Susquehanna River basin and its tributaries.

The requested funding will allow the research to expand in two crucial ways: modeling the sources of nutrient pollution and developing a methodology for better measuring the deposition of nitrogen pollution gases from the atmosphere to the landscape of New York.