Assessment of Nitrate Hazards in Umbria Region (Italy) Using Field Datasets: Good Agriculture Practices and Farms Sustainability

Abstract

The Nitrates Directive, EU 91/676/EEC, obliged all European Union member states to introduce laws that guarantee the use of proper agriculture and farm methods, with the aim to reduce pollution resulting from the excessive use of nitrates. In this work, we estimated the potential and effective nitrogen load from agriculture, farms, civil, and industrial sources in Umbria region, Italy, and assessed the previous (and actual) contamination by nitrates at different scales. The adopted methodology uses databases of the sources, such as the type of fertilizer (inorganic or manure), the type of industrial site, the census of livestock and field data at a local, basin, and regional scale. Hydrological and geological models are used to compute infiltration. The study shows that the contribution of farms to nitrate pollution is in the order of swine > cattle > sheep and goats; while the highest agricultural load is due to arable land, followed by olive and grape. The study also shows that municipalities that have values of nitrates over the threshold for both groundwater and surface water can rapidly change their status during consecutive years. This means that rules for farm sustainability, complying with the Nitrates Directive, EU 91/676/EEC, should be defined at a sub-basin scale, where the hydrogeological conditions strongly influence infiltration.