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Nitrogen cycle

Out of reach

Nature volume 452, pages 162–163 (2008)Cite this article

Denitrifying bacteria and hungry plants do sterling work in disposing of the nitrates that we pump into rivers and streams. But as the excess influx goes up and up, the efficiency of removal goes down and down.

Thanks to human contributions — from fossil-fuel combustion, the growth of agricultural crops, and above all the fertilizers that help to keep the more than six billion humans worldwide in food1 — nitrogen is entering Earth's soils at more than twice its natural rate. Much of the nitrogen from these sources goes on to enter streams, primarily as nitrates, and is transported downriver to coastal marine systems. There, it fuels excessive rates of plant growth and decay in the process known as eutrophication. This can result in hypoxia (shortage of oxygen) or, in extreme cases, anoxia (total loss of oxygen), creating the 'dead zones' seen in places such as Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic Sea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sybil Seitzinger is at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Rutgers/NOAA CMER Program, 71 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901-8521, USA. sybil@marine.rutgers.edu,

    Sybil Seitzinger

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  1. Sybil Seitzinger
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Seitzinger, S. Out of reach. Nature 452, 162–163 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/452162a

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