Atmospheric Nitrogen Pollution: Sources, Impacts and Solutions

Every year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Environmental Science Association of Ireland (ESAI) have an open call for Grassroots workshops. These are aimed at encouraging early career researchers to organise workshops relevant to the EPA and ESAI. Grassroots Workshops are an excellent opportunity for early career researchers to disseminate their work and encourage knowledge transfer, ideally establishing new collaborations. This year, a PhD student, David Kelleghan, in UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering was successful when applying to organise a workshop. David is a PhD student researching gaseous emissions and their environmental impact as part of the AmmoniaN2K project in the school. He ran a workshop entitled "Atmospheric Nitrogen Pollution: Sources, Impact and Solutions" in UCD on May 19th, 2017. The event hosted three keynote speakers, namely Prof. Mark Sutton of the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology, in the United Kingdom; Dr. Gary Lanigan of Teagasc and David Dodd of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment. The workshop was aimed at gauging the current level of knowledge in Ireland regarding the potential impacts and sources of atmospheric nitrogen pollution. With the new targets under the National Emissions Ceilings (NEC) Directive from the European Union, highlighting the need for a cost effective risk based approach for monitoring air pollution on sensitive ecosystems, this workshop proved timely and facilitated discussion between key stakeholders, international experts and both experienced and early career researchers. This allowed for an open frank discussion about both ongoing research and where this work needs to go in the future.