Human Impacts on the Nitrogen Cycle

Humans are greatly perturbing the global nitrogen cycle. Perhaps the best evidence for this perturbation comes from air trapped in layers of quasipermanent ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Ice cores taken from these two polar regions give us a 2000-year record of the Earth's atmospheric composition. This record indicates a striking constancy in nitrous oxide concentrations, at approximately 285 parts per billion, for nearly 1500 years. (See figure 2.) Since about 1600 AD, however, nitrous oxide concentrations have been increasing, and the present-day atmospheric burden of this gas is greater than at any other time in the past two millennia. Furthermore, nitrous oxide concentrations continue to increase, currently at a rate of about 0.3% per year. These variations indicate that many nitrogen flows are now larger than in preindustrial times, and other evidence suggests that human activity is responsible. (See figure 1.).