Determination of throughfall and its dissolved nitrogen content in sugar cane crop

• Grant number: 13/12894-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2013
• End date: August 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Ecosystems Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Marcos de Moraes
• Grantee: Taís Lisboa Paiva de Carvalho
• Host Institution: Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Due to the scenario of increasing demand for biofuels, sugar cane cultivation should be one of the main crops in Brazil in the next decades. However, the expansion of its cultivation modifies the water balance in ecological systems, as well as the elements transported in each component of the hydrological cycle. Nutrient input through fall is one of the important processes of the nutrients cycling, however, there are few surveys of nitrogen rates present in this process in crops such as sugar cane. Thus, this research project will be conducted in a sugar cane cultivation, in order to quantify the fraction of total rainfall that reaches the ground by through fall as well as its dissolved nitrogen contributions in order to add knowledge about the flow of this element and the amount that actually reaches the topsoil. This proposal was developed in order to support the regular project "Hydrology and nitrogen and carbon dynamics in watersheds with sugar cane land use " (FAPESP No. 2010/20256-1), as well as some related projects "Hydrological and nitrogen fluxes in catchment hillslopes covered by sugar cane "(FAPESP No. 2011/15695-9) and "Hydrological processes and nitrogen and carbon transport in catchments covered with sugar cane and semideciduous forest "(FAPESP No. 2010/51226-0). (AU)