Beyond carbon: Scientists worry about nitrogen's effects (IHT)

A woman clears away algae in Quindao, China, a buildup caused by

too much nitrogen in the Yellow Sea. (Nir Elias/Reuters)

Beyond carbon: Scientists worry about nitrogen's effects
Public discussion of complicated climate change is largely reduced to carbon: carbon emissions, carbon footprints, carbon trading. But other chemicals have large roles in the planet's health, and the one Giblin is looking for in Arctic mud, one that a growing number of other researchers are also concentrating on, is nitrogen.
In addition to having a role in climate change, nitrogen has a huge, probably more important biological impact through its presence in fertilizer. Peter Vitousek, a Stanford ecologist whose 1994 essay put nitrogen on the environmental map, co-authored a study this summer in the journal Nature that put greater attention on the nitrogen cycle and warned against ignoring it in favor of carbon benefits.
For example, Vitousek said in an interview, "There's a great danger in doing something like, oh, overfertilizing a cornfield to boost biofuel consumption, where the carbon benefits are far outweighed by the nitrogen damage."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/02/healthscience/02nitr.php




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