In a paper co-authored by senior author Andrew Elmore, a professor of landscape ecology at the Center
“This issue has been on the radar for a long time.scientists,” said Rachel Mason, who participated in the study. “In experiments, we saw some evidence of this, but it was scattered throughout the research community and in different fields.”
Growing awareness of declining affordabilitynitrogen has been somewhat overshadowed by efforts to combat the opposite problem: excess anthropogenic nitrogen pollution. Industrial and agricultural activities have doubled the global abundance of reactive nitrogen, causing the element to frequently seep into ecosystems. This increases the risk of low oxygen dead zones, harmful algal blooms, reduced biodiversity and other negative impacts.
Much attention is paid to mitigating the problemexcess nitrogen in certain ecosystems, but the new article aims to reinforce the reverse trend, also driven by anthropogenic pressure, that is leading to reduced access to the vital element in other areas.
Scientists noted that this problem, like manyothers are related to human consumption of fossil fuels. Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have soaked into the Earth's atmosphere, raising the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere to its highest level in millions of years.
Nitrogen is one of the most important elements for life.on Earth: it is the main component of air, a key building block for proteins, and an important ingredient in agricultural fertilizers needed to feed the world's population.
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