LAUSR

Swine manure management and storage have been implicated as a major source of increasing agricultural ammonia (NH3 ) emissions resulting in increased ammonium (NH4 + ) deposition in North Carolina. This study was conducted to establish how improvements in manure and animal management have affected lagoons' nutrient loading and subsequent lagoon NH3 emissions determined from measured lagoon chemistry and climate data. Archived lagoon chemistry analyses from 182 farm lagoons (106,000 sample analyses) were used to evaluate trends in lagoon chemical properties. Process and empirical (statistical) NH3 volatilization models were used with the data to calculate changes in NH3 emissions from 2001 through 2018. Lagoon nutrient trends for both finisher and sow farms showed that annual averages of nutrients had decreases ranging from 18% to 93% except for a 41% increase in copper for finisher primary lagoons. Because of reduced nitrogen and pH in the lagoons, a process model of NH3 emissions suggested decreases from primary lagoons of 49% and 25% from both finisher and sow farm lagoons, respectively. Empirical (statistical) models predicted even larger relative NH3 decreases (up to 54%). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.