A climate policy that raises the price of carbon-intensive products across the entire U.S. economy would yield a side benefit of reducing nitrate groundwater contamination throughout the Mississippi River Basin.

The Gulf of Mexico, an important U.S. fishery, also would see modest benefits from the nitrate reductions. These were among the conclusions of a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The study, led by four early career researchers, three of them from Purdue University, combined four scientific models to simulate how different aspects of climate policy, agricultural economics and the environment would interact. A major feature of the study traced how nitrogen that humans have converted into other forms, called reactive nitrogen, flows through the environment.

Read more at Purdue University

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