Category : Climate Change | Location : International | Posted on 2022-08-25 00:08:01
Nitrogen is all pervasive. It is more abundant in the air than oxygen and constitutes 78 per cent of the atmosphere. Nitrogen is also vital to life — it is essential for plant nutrition and thus, sustains all other beings.
But plants cannot use atmospheric nitrogen directly the way they absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) for photosynthesis. For this, they depend on a biogeochemical cycle that, with the help of some bacteria or even lightning, combines the inert gas with other elements to form reactive compounds like ammonia and nitric oxide and "fix" them in the soil.
Scientists have known for quite a while that this cycle is getting disrupted. The levels of reactive nitrogen have increased tenfold since the pre-industrial era due to rampant use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and burning of fossil fuels, according to a 2019 study published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. This has caused algal blooms, created dead zones in oceans and accelerated biological diversity loss in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
A recent study, however, states that scientists have so far only partly understood the scale of this disruption and where it is unfolding.
“There is both too much nitrogen and too little nitrogen on Earth at the same time,” said Rachel Mason, lead author of the study, published in the journal Science in April 2022. Just like too much of nitrogen, declining availability of nitrogen is also a cause of worry.
Source: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/environment/global-warming-forests-grasslands-getting-depleted-of-nitrogen-can-impact-animal-growth-84439
