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The Nitrogen Problem: Global Warming Is Making It Worse
- 21 9y agoHow about adding genes to plants to make them able to extract nitrogen directly from air? Apparently some vegetables are already doing this (peas, beans, soybeans, alfafa) But I can already see the huge marketing problem of this (non-organic, unnatural, GMO, ...)
- cropsieboss 9y agoCorn and wheat. Most of nitrogen is ferilizers and cattle poop. Most of plants grown and farmland used is for cattle. I don't think farmers would care if they had nitrogen sucking gmo plants for their cattle since they already feed them tons of GMO. Plants grown for human consumption are invisible in the profiler.
- adrianN 9y agoThose plants are doing it via symbiosis with soil bacteria. That seems a bit difficult to engineer into other plants, because it involves a lot more than producing a couple of extra molecules, like e.g. BT corn. But then again, I'm not a geneticist.
- QAPereo 9y agoAbsolutely, and it's the reason why even something as lucrative as like white truffles or huckleberries can't be cultivated very easily, if at all.
- thatcherc 9y agoI don't quite understand what your comment is getting at but I'm interested. Do truffles and huckleberries only grow in nitrogen rich soils?
- QAPereo 9y agoOh sorry, no. Truffles grow as part of a symbiotic system around certain tree roots, and it's devilishly hard to recreate those conditions well enough in "captivity" if you get my drift. Huckleberries are an interesting case and that nobody is quite sure why they fail as a crop, but at the end of the day the only way to grow more huckleberries is to clear woodland and let huckleberries grow there. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/08/11/542690164/for-the-love-of-huckleberries-august-brings-out-hunters-of-elusive-fruit http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/08/11/542690164/for...
- rdtsc 9y agoClover is an excellent nitrogen fixer. I found out by being lazy and not fertilizing my lawn. In a few years I have a lot of clover and much less grass. I was wondering why and found out about nitrogen fixation from air. Granted can't substitute it as food crop but lawns also cover a good amount of area.
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- raverbashing 9y agoAlgae growth == Carbon Sequestering We should be finding ways of leveraging this to our advantage instead of complaining
- cropsieboss 9y agoThey suck out oxygen too. That's how you get ocean deadzones.
- dredmorbius 9y agoThat depends on whether you've got photosynthetic or abiotic algae. Blue-green algae produce oxygen. One theory on ice-ages involves what's basically pond-lilly taking over the Arctic, which at the time was a shallow sea with a freshwater lens over salt water.
- cropsieboss 9y agoCyanobacteria would still use oxygen when there is no light, and other nutrients. By allowing them to burst in numbers they would easily suck it all out of the sea.
- sddfd 9y ago>abiotic algae What specific species are you referring to? >Blue-green algae produce oxygen. That is only true during daylight. At night algae consume oxygen. Independently, photosynthetic activity can increase pH values drastically.
- dredmorbius 9y agoSpecific mechanism is described here. It's the bacterial decomposition of the algae rather than the algael bloom itself which directly prompts the issue. A bit of hair splitting, but useful for understanding what's going on. https://articles.extension.org/pages/45651/if-algae-produce-oxygen-in-a-pond-how-can-having-too-much-algae-cause-an-oxygen-depletion https://articles.extension.org/pages/45651/if-algae-produce-...
- sddfd 9y agoWhile the article states that nitrogen availability will increase due to climate change, I am missing a discussion about it also being the limiting factor. While nitrogen is frequently the limiting factor in oceans, this it might not be the case in lakes and rivers, where phosphorus is more often the limiting factor.