[Contribution of Base Flow to Total Nitrogen Loading in Subtropical Agricultural Catchments]

With the fast development of economics and improvement of people's living standard, non-point source pollution of the agricultural catchments in subtropical China has become more and more severe, where water quality deterioration has become a main barrier for sustainable development and ecological restoration. The process of ecohydrology in catchment is greatly influenced by the process of base flow in channel. This study selected the Tuojia and Jianshan catchments located in Changsha County, Hunan Province, to quantify and compare the contribution of base flow to total nitrogen (TN) loading from January 2011 to December 2013, through field observation and model estimation. The results suggested that the Tuojia catchment with higher intensity of rice agriculture had the greater volume of base flow, higher average flow-weighted TN concentration in base flow, and greater monthly TN loading via base flow [15.2 mm · month⁻¹, 4.14 mg · L⁻¹ and 0.54 kg · (hm² · month)⁻¹, respectively] than those in the Jianshan catchment with lower intensity [11.4 mm · month⁻¹, 1.72 mg · L⁻¹ and 0.20 kg · (hm² · month)⁻¹, respectively]. The base flow contribution to TN loading showed an apparently seasonal pattern. During rice-growing seasons, the contributions of base flow to TN loading were 23.2% and 18.6% in the Tuojia and Jianshan catchments, respectively, lower than those in the fallow seasons (46.9% and 40.0% correspondingly. These results suggested that rice agriculture increased the contribution of base flow in the fallow season to TN loading. Therefore, to alleviate the suffering of non-point source pollution in the rice agriculture catchments, reasonable management measure of rice fields should be implemented to decrease contrihution of base flow to TN loading.