Latest Nitrous Stories

Large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer lead to nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere It's summer. For many of us, summer is a time synonymous with fresh corn, one of the major field crops produced in the United States. In 2011, corn was planted on more than 92 million acres in the U.S., helping the nation continue its trend as the world's largest exporter of the crop. Corn is a nitrogen-loving plant. To achieve desired production levels, most U.S. farmers apply synthetic...

CLEVELAND, April 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading tech training school Ohio Technical College (OTC) has partnered with legendary auto parts manufacturer and hot rod industry icon Edelbrock, LLC to offer a one-of-a-kind training program to the next generation of technicians. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120420/CL91876 ) Known as the Edelbrock Performance Academy, this course gives students a solid foundation in the building and tuning of high performance products,...

Chemists from the University of California, Berkeley have discovered evidence of a link between increased fertilizer use and a rise in atmospheric nitrous oxide, a major greenhouse gas. Climate scientists have long assumed the cause of rising nitrous oxide levels in the atmosphere was due in part to nitrogen-based fertilizers. Such fertilizers are used to stimulate microbes in the ground to convert nitrogen to nitrous oxide at a faster rate. Published in the April issue of the journal...

  Measuring the emission of greenhouse gases from croplands should take into account the crops themselves. That's the conclusion of a study in the Sept.-Oct. issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality, which examined the impact of farm practices such as tillage on the greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide. Expressing emissions per unit of crop yield rather than on a more conventional per area basis produced very different results, says the study's leader, Rod Venterea, research soil...

For the First Time, Microbiologists Identified the Structure of the Bacterial Enzyme that Decomposes Nitrous Oxide and the Decomposition Mechanism Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a harmful climate gas. Its effect as a greenhouse gas is 300 times stronger than that of carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide destroys the ozone layer. In industrial agriculture, it is generated on excessively fertilized fields when microorganisms decompose nitrate fertilizers. Decomposition of nitrous oxide frequently is...

New Zealand study shows biochar to decrease nitrous oxide emissionsNitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas and a precursor to compounds that contribute to the destruction of the ozone. Intensively managed, grazed pastures are responsible for an increase in nitrous oxide emissions from grazing animals' excrement. Biochar is potentially a mitigation option for reducing the world's elevated carbon dioxide emissions, since the embodied carbon can be sequestered in the soil. Biochar also has the...

Reactive Nitrogen Causes Much Higher Climate-damaging Nitrous Oxide Emissions in European Forests than Previously Estimated by the IPCCReactive nitrogen compounds from agriculture, transport, and industry lead to increased emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) from forests in Europe. Nitrous oxide emission from forest soils is at least twice as high as estimated so far by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is one of the key messages of the first study on...

In a study published December 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences (PNAS), a team of researchers including University of New Hampshire scientists Wilfred Wollheim, William McDowell, and Jody Potter details findings that show emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide from global rivers and streams are three times previous estimates used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "“ the leading international body for the assessment of climate...

Waterways receiving nitrogen from human activities are significant sourceWhat goes in must come out, a truism that now may be applied to global river networks.Human-caused nitrogen loading to river networks is a potentially important source of nitrous oxide emission to the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and stratospheric ozone destruction.It happens via a microbial process called denitrification, which converts nitrogen to nitrous oxide...

A Kansas State University professor is part of a national research team that discovered that streams and rivers produce three times more greenhouse gas emissions than estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Through his work on the Konza Prairie Biological Station and other local streams, Walter Dodds, university distinguished professor of biology, helped demonstrate that nitrous oxide emissions from rivers and streams make up at least 10 percent of human-caused nitrous...