Of all the human-induced changes to Earth’s chemical cycles, our use of nitrogen is among the most profound. Usually this is evident when there’s too much of it, as when fertilizer-induced algae blooms extinguish life in the Gulf of Mexico — but there’s another, overlooked way that nitrogen has been disrupted. Across many parts of the terrestrial world, plants may soon contain too little of it, with potentially disastrous consequences.
In a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, a team of 38 researchers led by Joseph Craine, an ecologist with Jonah Ventures, describe their analyses of more than 40,000 vegetation samples collected across 37 years on every continent but Antarctica. They wanted to learn whether the availability of nitrogen — one of life’s chemical building blocks — is changing.
It certainly seems to be. According to the researchers, plants outside of agricultural settings now contain 9 percent less nitrogen than they did in 1980. And that, says Craine, may be only the latest stage of a planetary decline that started a century ago. It “could change how terrestrial ecosystems function,” he says.
» The scary future of nature with less nitrogen
http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/11/the-scary-future-of-nature-with-less-nitrogen/