Since the mid-1900s, humans have been exerting an ever-increasing impact on the global nitrogen cycle. Human activities, such as making fertilizers and burning fossil fuels, have significantly ...

Nitrogen is an essential element required by all life — vital for plant and animal growth and nourishment. But, an overabundance of nitrogen can cause negative ecological effects. Over the past ...

The natural nitrogen cycle. First, we need to understand the natural cycle of carbon and nitrogen—two of the main elements that form living matter. We can observe this cycle in forests, for example.

posted: 07 October 2010 02:25 pm ET. While nitrogen is an element that is essential to life, it is an environmental scourge at high levels. Humans are overloading ecosystems with nitrogen through the ...

Farmers have always interfered with the cycle, because nitrogen availability often limits the fertility of soils. They have boosted production by planting more leguminous crops, like clover.

Such nitrogen fixation, as it is known, is a fundamental limit on plant growth and an essential nutrient for all life. Yet, this critically important cycle remains poorly understood.

The nitrogen cycle was a foundation of life on Earth, helping to sustain and nourish flora and fauna alike in a harmonious balance of atomic movement. That balance was shattered by ...

Since the mid-1900s, humans have been exerting an ever-increasing impact on the global nitrogen cycle. Human activities, such as making fertilizers and burning fossil fuels, have significantly ...

At the beginning of the XXᵉ century, two chemists succeeded in fixing nitrogen in the air. Their invention saw the birth of intensive agriculture, gravely disrupting the nitrogen cycle.