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Environmental science

Nitrogen oxides and tropical agriculture

Nature volume 392, pages 866–867 (1998)Cite this article

Since 1992, and the appearance of the first scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change1, a great deal of evidence has accumulated showing that agricultural activities, especially application of fertilizers and animal manure, have resulted in increased emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitric oxide (NO) to the atmosphere2. The reasons why we should care about this are that N2O is one of the so-called greenhouse gases, constituting 6% of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect2, and also contributing to the depletion of stratospheric ozone; NO, too, is an important player in atmospheric chemistry, for it participates in regulating the oxidant balance in the troposphere.

These assessments are based on evidence from temperate areas. But what of the tropics? Writing in Global Biogeochemical Cycles3, Veldkamp, Keller and Nuñez discuss measurements3,4,5,6, of nitrogen oxide fluxes from soils in tropical agricultural systems and argue that fluxes in such systems may be much higher than those generally observed in temperate regions. They also point out that estimates of these fluxes depend less on fertilizer composition, as has sometimes been assumed, and more on the conditions in the soil concerned and the timing of treatment.

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Figure 1: ‘Hole-in-the-pipe’ model of the regulation of trace-gas production and consumption by nitrification and denitrification12.
Figure 2: Model of the relationship between water-filled pore space (WFPS) of soils and the relative fluxes of nitrogen gases from nitrification.

References

  1. Houghton, J. T., Callander, B. A. & Varney, S. K. (eds) Climate Change 1992: The Supplementary Report to the IPCC Scientific Assessment (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992).

  2. Houghton, J. T. et al. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995).

  3. Veldkamp, E., Keller, M. & Nuñez, M. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 12, 71–79 (1998).

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  11. Land and Water Bull. No. 6 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1997).

  12. Davidson, E. A. in Microbial Production and Consumption of Greenhouse Gases: Methane, Nitrogen Oxides and Halomethanes (eds Rogers, J. E. & Whitman, W. B.) 219-235 (Am. Soc. Microbiol., Washington DC, 1991).

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  1. the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, PO Box 1, 3720, BA Bilthoven, The Netherlands

    A. F. Bouwman

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Bouwman, A. Nitrogen oxides and tropical agriculture. Nature 392, 866–867 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/31809

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