Trends in N2O emissions are region - dependent, with the largest increasing trend in temperate Asia owing to
more nitrogen fertilizer usage there.
Modern corn hybrids require
more nitrogen fertilizer, herbicides, and insecticides than any other crop, while causing the most extensive erosion of top soil.
Statistics show that from 2003 to 2005, annual corn yields in parts of the Midwestern United States and north China were almost the same, even though Chinese farmers used six times
more nitrogen fertilizer than their American counterparts and generated nearly 23 times the amount of excess nitrogen.
Not exact matches
Commercial baby food companies may buy veggies that are grown in a part of the country where the nitrate contamination of soil is lower, where the sun shines
more or where Farmer's do not use high levels of
nitrogen containing
fertilizers.
He managed to hack bacteria so they would perform a vital service for young rice plants, helping them utilize
nitrogen and grow
more efficiently with less
fertilizer.
On April 19, 1995, an unemployed security guard with an antigovernment vendetta detonated
more than two tons of
nitrogen fertilizer mixed with fuel at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
Using different bacteria but the same overall setup, the researchers later turned
nitrogen gas into ammonia for
fertilizer, which could offer a
more sustainable approach to the energy - guzzling method used for
fertilizer production today.
Food production is rising sharply, requiring
more carbon - based fuels and
nitrogen - based
fertilizers, both of which exacerbate global warming, river and ocean pollution, and a host of other ills.
Crops such as corn and soybeans flourish when
nitrogen - containing
fertilizer is applied to Midwestern fields, but many farmers routinely apply
more fertilizer than their crops can take up.
If their efficiency could be transferred to crops, we could grow
more food in less time using less water and less
nitrogen fertilizer.
Any
nitrogen not taken up by plants is met by soil microbes that turn the
fertilizer into nitrous oxide, an ozone - depleting gas that is also 300 times
more potent than carbon dioxide.
Demand for phosphorus and
nitrogen fertilizer is rising steadily as the world grows
more crowded.
In contrast, after
more than 30 years of trying to create corn that can convert atmospheric
nitrogen into usable ammonia instead of relying on
fertilizers, Ursin says she is still far from finding a way.
Its significance is so important today because food production for
more than half of the world's people can only be guaranteed with the aid of
nitrogen fertilizers.
«However, the greatest reduction in
nitrogen leaching occurs when bioenergy crops displace other cropland or grassland, because energy crops consume
more water and less
nitrogen fertilizer than the crops and grasses that they replace, resulting in less water runoff and
nitrogen loss.»
Southern Asia contains some 90 % of the world's rice fields and
more than 60 % of the world's
nitrogen fertilizer use.
Since the 1980s, the use of
nitrogen fertilizers and the number of livestock have doubled, whereas coal consumption has increased
more than 3-fold and the number of motor vehicles
more than 20-fold.
In a recent study, engineering researchers at Waterloo found that small wetlands have a
more significant role to play than larger ones in preventing excess nutrients like
nitrogen and phosphorus from
fertilizer from reaching waterbodies such as the Great Lakes.
At Ku'au and Mā «alaea Bays, coastal waters contained nearly 100 times
more nitrogen than less impacted locations due to
fertilizer - enriched SGD.
Moreover, if the new rice supplies less carbon and other nutrients to the soil, farmers might eventually want to use
more nitrogen - based
fertilizers, resulting in the release of nitrous oxide, another strong greenhouse gas.
«By incorporating this, we're putting that silica back, which as we show can decrease inorganic arsenic in the grain but it also can provide other nutrients so maybe
more phosphorous,
more nitrogen as sort of an organic
fertilizer without the need for
more chemical
fertilizer.
Crops that produce
more nitrogen will require less
fertilizer, thus lowering production costs and reducing the potential for runoff that can impact the environment, according to Subramanian.
It turns out that there's such a double - win in most bathrooms around the world; if we had «NoMix» toilets that separate urine from solid waste, municipal wastewater plants would have a significantly easier task (and produce
more methane to generate electricity), and we could much
more easily extract precious nutrients like phosphorus and
nitrogen for use as
fertilizer (instead of using fossil fuels).
Resource - conserving cropping practices from WHEAT, such as
more targeted use of
nitrogen fertilizers or sowing wheat into untilled soils and crop residues, can raise wheat farmers» incomes while curbing greenhouse gas emissions, if widely adopted, he added.
Heavy use of
nitrogen fertilizers on farms, for example, allows
more ammonia to run off into the oceans.
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 12.8 billion tons of
nitrogen fertilizer costing
more than $ 800 million were added to fields that produce corn, cotton, grains and other commodity crops.
By producing
more food on less land, it may be possible to reduce these emissions, but this so - called intensification often involves increasing
fertilizer use, which can lead to large emissions of
nitrogen - containing gases that also contribute to global warming.
This fast decomposition also limits the amount of
nitrogen that can get absorbed by crop roots and requires farmers to apply
more fertilizer to boost production.
The Japanese locate their tofu factories very close to animal farms because
more than 95 % of the okara (soybean pulp) is fed to animals (mostly hogs and dairy cows) and about 4 % of the okara becomes
fertilizer (compost) because it is fairly rich in
nitrogen and trace minerals.
Perhaps instead of focusing on regulation and instead focusing on incenting positive behavior, we could get
more digesters in place which would produce clean energy, reduce the amount of
nitrogen and other nutrient pollution and provide farmers with another couple sources of revenue (electricity sales, fiber bedding sales (or savings) and increased
fertilizer value of the liquid digestate as compared to raw manure.
Mr. Zhang and his co-workers also demonstrated that use of
nitrogen fertilizer could be halved without loss of yield or grain quality, reducing
nitrogen losses by
more than 50 percent in the process.
In a 2004 study in western Kenya, a co-author, Pedro Sanchez, and colleagues found that farmers used only about 6 pounds of
nitrogen fertilizer per acre (7 kilograms per hectare)-- little
more than 1 percent of the total used by Chinese farmers.
«Our agricultural practices have always impacted water quality, but over the past century the mechanization of agriculture and the use of
more potent
fertilizers has caused a greater effect: the
nitrogen leakage rate is higher....
The residuals may have use as a
fertilizer to help recycle
nitrogen instead of making
more fertilizer to get to the oceans causing dead zones.
If you get 38 %
more growth with the same
fertilizer the
nitrogen content of the plant will be less.
The study suggests that ammonium - based
fertilizer might be
more useful under high - CO2 conditions, but says nothing about overall
nitrogen uptake.
Other studies have shown that coating
nitrogen fertilizers with various materials, such as polyolefins, can slow the release of
nitrogen nutrients so that they are
more synchronous with the requirements of the growing crop.
It has been suggested that the adoption of zero tillage in western Canada, with the potential to store
more moisture and use moisture
more efficiently, has been a contributing factor in the substantial drop in hectares of summerfallow, increases in land in crop, and increases in
nitrogen fertilizer usage in western Canada in the last decade.
The opportunities for improvement are even greater in rapidly developing economies such as China, which now uses much
more nitrogen and phosphorus
fertilizer much less efficiently than either the United States or Europe, and at a much higher cost in pollution and human health.
Some regions may even shift from being a carbon sink to being an atmospheric carbon dioxide source, 50,51,52 though large uncertainties exist, such as whether projected disturbances to forests will be chronic or episodic.31 Midwest forests are
more resilient to forest carbon losses than most western forests because of relatively high moisture availability, greater
nitrogen deposition (which tends to act as a
fertilizer), and lower wildfire risk.50, 51,53
«The MSU - EPRI methodology allows farmers to be paid to reduce their use of
nitrogen fertilizer, while assisting other carbon market participants to reduce emissions
more cost effectively than otherwise would be possible,» said Adam Diamant, technical executive at EPRI and a co-author of the new ACR methodology.
Simply feeding all those people will require doubling agricultural production if their diets are improved with a bit
more meat as the fish in the oceans will be long gone and that's all supposed to happen without tractors powered by fossil fuels and
nitrogen fertilizers from NatGas.