Preferential P retention emerges in almost 90% of global lakes. This retention leads to a strong elevation in the N:P ratios in lakes outflow, exacerbates the imbalance of the nutrient cycles and can potentially result in biodiversity losses and algal blooms in lakes and downstream ecosystems.
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References
Penuelas, J. & Sardans, J. The global nitrogen-phosphorus imbalance. Science 357, 266–267 (2022). A Perspective that presents the imbalance of global N and P cycles.
Penuelas, J., Janssens, I. A., Ciais, P., Obersteiner, M. & Sardans, J. Anthropogenic global shifts in biospheric N and P concentrations and ratios and their impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem productivity, food security, and human health. Glob. Chang. Biol. 26, 1962–1985 (2020). This paper reports the increase of N:P ratios in anthropogenic input.
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Rosentreter, J. A. et al. Half of global methane emissions come from highly variable aquatic ecosystem sources. Nat. Geosci. 14, 225–230 (2021). This paper includes a widely used global up-scaling method.
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This is a summary of: Wu, Z. et al. Imbalance of global nutrient cycles exacerbated by the greater retention of phosphorus over nitrogen in lakes. Nat. Geosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00958-7 (2022).
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Preferential phosphorus retention in lakes alters the balance of global nutrient cycles. Nat. Geosci. 15, 434–435 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00962-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00962-x
