Discussion on population-land-environment problem of Beijing based on nutrient balance

Abstract: More and more people immigrated into metropolises, resulting in the increase of food consumption and waste production. Human waste contains a lot of nutrients, and above all, excreta is the most representative. If the excreta does not be treated well timely, it could bring some serious environmental problems within city, especially for the water environment. Taking the plain area in Beijing as the example, we focused on its land use change between 2004 and 2014 by the method of remote sensing; besides, we also estimated nutrient balance in farmlands due to the changes of population and land use; finally, we also researched the change of interface between urban construction land and outside environment by mean shape index. The results were as follows: 1) Compared with 2004, the increase of population and food consumption caused an increase of about 0.34×105 t nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) nutrients from human excrement in 2014, and there was a nutrient increment of 282.17 t in excreta sludge after water treatment; 2) Farmland had a strong capacity for nutrient absorption in Beijing, for instance, the grain crop field of winter wheat and spring maize could absorb 820 kg/hm2 per year, and the vegetable filed of rape could absorb 1148 kg/hm2 per year; the decreased farmland area resulted in an about 1.17×105 t loss of nutrient treatment capacity; 3) The decline of mean shape index from 1.48 to 1.37 demonstrated the shrink of construction land contacting boundary, which made the evacuation efficiency of metabolic flow decline. Urban nutrient surplus and resultant serious water pollution were mainly due to the increase of population, food consumption and human metabolites, as well as the decrease of farmland area, construction land contacting boundary extent, and resultant metabolites absorption capacity. According to statistics, there is still half of excreta sludge stacked or buried in suburb areas without harmless disposal, which increases the risk of regional water environment pollution. City is an open system, in terms of the circulation of matter and energy in city with external environment, we reckon that, compared with mononuclear mega-city, polycentric city with more farmland and forest land interlaced with construction land has a higher nutrient liquidity and ecological stability. Therefore, the multi-center urban structure can avoid the accumulation of nutrients in the city in the process of urban development, and it is worth learning from other cities. However, it is very hard to rebuild the urban construction of Beijing, and thus it is of importance to treat the nutrient within the urban area. In order to better treat the ever-increasing nutrient of human metabolites in the urban area, on the one hand, we suggest to recycle and reuse livestock manure and wasted water into farmlands instead of stacking or burying it, which can help to develop green agriculture; on the other hand, given the increase of forest land due to afforestation of city, the use of reclaimed water in green area irrigation can not only decompose the redundant nutrients, but also save water resource.