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Nitrogen cycle

Natural organic tendency

Nature volume 415, pages 381–382 (2002)Cite this article

Dissolved nitrogen is usually thought to be transported from land to sea in inorganic form. But the predominance of organic nitrogen in streams in temperate South America suggests that this view needs a rethink.

The Haber–Bosch process for transforming atmospheric N2 into ammonia, and so creating nitrogen fertilizer, was invented almost a century ago. Nitrogen is the main nutrient that plants take up from soils, so the Haber–Bosch process was in large part responsible for the vast increase in food production that helped to support a booming human population during the twentieth century. But it has also dramatically altered the global nitrogen cycle. The latest research attesting to that point, by Perakis and Hedin1, appears on page 416 of this issue.

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Figure 1: Forms of nitrogen storage in, or export from, two ecosystems in North and South America.

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  1. Department of Environmental Sciences, Laboratory of Soil Science and Geology, Wageningen University and Research Centre, POB 37, Wageningen, 6700, The Netherlands

    Nico van Breemen

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van Breemen, N. Natural organic tendency. Nature 415, 381–382 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/415381a

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