Book chapter
Nitrogen in the Yaqui Valley: Sources, Transfers, and Consequences
Seeds of Sustainability, pp.171-195
Island Press/Center for Resource Economics
10/01/2013
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/124593
Abstract
In nitrogen fertilizer management, as in so many other ways, the Yaqui Valley represents a microcosm for the study of changes that are happening all over the world. Over the last thirty years, policies and agronomic advances in the Yaqui Valley have led to the development of a thriving wheat industry dependent on large inputs of nitrogen (N) and water. The adoption of high N application rates in the valley reflects trends in many regions of the world. Globally, the inputs of N to agriculture, together with additional N resulting from the planting of legume crops, add more N annually than is fixed by the biological nitrogen fixation in all natural terrestrial ecosystems (fig. 10.1). These enhanced additions of N have been in many cases critical to increased crop yield, but they also have enormous negative consequences for the global system. Because N is such a mobile element, it tends to not stay where it is put; thus additions of N through fertilizer use are linked with losses of N from soils to freshwater and marine systems, and of greenhouse gases and air pollutants to the atmosphere.
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Details
- Title
- Nitrogen in the Yaqui Valley: Sources, Transfers, and Consequences
- Creators
- Toby Ahrens - Stanford UniversityJohn Harrison - Washington State UniversityMichael Beman - University of California SystemPeter Jewett - Stanford UniversityPamela Matson - University of California System
- Publication Details
- Seeds of Sustainability, pp.171-195
- Academic Unit
- Environment, School of the (CAS); Harrison Research Group: Global Change and Watershed Biochemistry
- Publisher
- Island Press/Center for Resource Economics; Washington, DC
- Identifiers
- 99900667902901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Book chapter