Molecular signature of organic nitrogen in septic-impacted groundwater
Date
2014-08Author
Arnold, William A.
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Longnecker, Krista
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Kroeger, Kevin D.
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Kujawinski, Elizabeth B.
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https://hdl.handle.net/1912/6964As published
https://doi.org/10.1039/C4EM00289JAbstract
Dissolved inorganic and organic nitrogen levels are elevated in aquatic systems due to
anthropogenic activities. Dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) arises from various sources, and its
impact could be more clearly constrained if specific sources were identified and if the molecular
level composition of DON were better understood. In this work, the pharmaceutical
carbamazepine was used to identify septic-impacted groundwater in a coastal watershed. Using
ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry data, the nitrogen-containing features of the dissolved
organic matter in septic-impacted and non-impacted samples were compared. The septic
impacted groundwater samples have a larger abundance of nitrogen-containing formulas.
Impacted samples have additional DON features in the regions ascribed as ‘protein-like’ and
‘lipid-like’ in van Krevelen space and have more intense nitrogen-containing features in a
specific region of a carbon versus mass plot. These features are potential indicators of dissolved
organic nitrogen arising from septic effluents, and this work suggests that ultrahigh resolution
mass spectrometry is a valuable tool to identify and characterize sources of DON.
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Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2014. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Royal Society of Chemistry for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in
Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts 16 (2014):2400-2407, doi:10.1039/C4EM00289J.