Incidence of changes in land use on nitrogen dynamics using the LOTOS-EUROS model for the Aburrá Valley

The change in land use promotes climate change and the loss of diversity, producing effects on the atmosphere, ecosystems and human health. Land use change scenarios, together with transport chemistry models (CTM) are effective tools to analyze the causes and consequences of atmospheric dynamics in various spatial or temporal scenarios. The objective is to evaluate the variables of dry deposition of NOy and surface concentration of NOx, calculated by the LOTOS-EUROS transport chemistry model, in different proposed city scenarios in the Aburrá Valley (AMVA), generating an approximation to evaluate and predict the consequences of the cover changes on the atmospheric dynamics of nitrogen in the AMVA and its possible effect on the surrounding ecosystems from a modeling perspective. A land use classification was made with the 23 categories of Global Land Cover (GLC) for Colombia resolution (0.3km * 0.3km), additional, this was modified using the QGIS program and the image © 2015 Google satellite in order to correct the classifications for important intra-urban, peri-urban and rural areas, proposing 6 hypothetical city scenarios on which LOTOS-EUROS were implemented, performing the analyzes with the MATLAB Software. The quantitative results show that the model has a good sensitivity to small changes, although quantitatively they do not seem to be significant, qualitatively if it has different behaviors in NOy and NOx. The nitrogen deposition that the urban area contributes to the surrounding ecosystems of the valley is verified depending on the scenarios proposed. Land uses with a wooded or mixed tree cover seem to have a barrier behavior, preventing nitrogen deposition, and urban or artificial land uses seem to increase deposition. According to what has been documented, it can have both a negative and positive effect, although there are more arguments to consider that there are more negative ones, highlights the little documentation in this regard for the tropical zone. The results suggest that the nitrogen deposition and transport dynamics for AMVA can hardly be generalized, since each scenario behaves differently. The resulting deposition prediction will be useful to define retention strategies for nitrogenous compounds coming out of the AMVA, for the conservation and protection of natural ecosystems in the interior and outskirts of the valley on which there is a high contribution of nitrogen.