(Press-News.org) Jake Beaulieu, a postdoctoral researcher the Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, Ohio, who earned his doctorate at the University of Notre Dame, and Jennifer Tank, Galla Professor of Biological Sciences at the University, are lead authors of new paper demonstrating that streams and rivers receiving nitrogen inputs from urban and agricultural land uses are a significant source of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere.
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and the loss of the protective ozone layer. Nitrogen loading to river networks from urban and agricultural activities is a potentially important source of nitrous oxide emission to the atmosphere. It occurs through a microbial process called denitrification, which converts dissolved nitrate-nitrogen to nitrous oxide and dinitorgen gases.
In a paper appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Beaulieu and Tank describe how they measured nitrous oxide production rates from denitrification in 72 streams draining multiple land-use types across the United States.
They found that the amount of nitrous oxide produced in streams is related to human activities that release nitrogen into the environment, such as fertilizer use and sewage discharges.
"Runoff from agricultural and urban watersheds has increased the availability of nitrogen in streams and rivers, greatly increasing nitrous oxide production rates," Beaulieu said. "This research shows that river networks play an important role in how human nitrogen use affects climate change and ozone loss."
The new study reports that streams and river networks are the source of at least 10 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide emission to the atmosphere worldwide, which is three times the amount estimated by an earlier report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Beaulieu and Tank suggest that reductions in nitrous oxide emissions from stream and river networks can be achieved through changes in urban and agricultural land use patterns, such as reduced agricultural fertilizer application.###
The study appearing in PNAS was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Beaulieu and Tank conducted this research in collaboration with colleagues from Michigan State University, University of New Hampshire, University of Wyoming, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Tennessee, Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., Oregon State University, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of New Mexico, Kansas State University, Arizona State University, U.S. Forest Service., Montana State University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Central Washington University, Ball State University, Wright State University, University of Georgia, Indiana University, University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, U.S. Geological Survey and Washington State University.
END
VIDEO:
BYU nutritionist Tory Parker talks about his study into why oranges are so good for you.
Click here for more information.
Provo, Utah - In time for Christmas, BYU nutritionists are squeezing all the healthy compounds out of oranges to find just the right mixture responsible for their age-old health benefits.
The popular stocking stuffer is known for its vitamin C and blood-protecting antioxidants, but researchers wanted to learn why a whole orange is better for ...
Vanderbilt University researchers may have found a clue to the blues that can come with the flu – depression may be triggered by the same mechanisms that enable the immune system to respond to infection.
In a study in the December issue of Neuropsychopharmacology, Chong-Bin Zhu, M.D., Ph.D., Randy Blakely, Ph.D., William Hewlett, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues activated the immune system in mice to produce "despair-like" behavior that has similarities to depression in humans.
"Many people exhibit signs of lethargy and depressed mood during flu-like illnesses," said Blakely, ...
Researchers at Vanderbilt University have "engineered" a mouse that can run on a treadmill twice as long as a normal mouse by increasing its supply of acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter essential for muscle contraction.
The finding, reported this month in the journal Neuroscience, could lead to new treatments for neuromuscular disorders such as myasthenia gravis, which occurs when cholinergic nerve signals fail to reach the muscles, said Randy Blakely, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Center for Molecular Neuroscience.
Blakely and his colleagues inserted a gene into ...
MANHATTAN, KAN. -- 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 oxide emissions -- three times greater than current estimates ...
It's long been accepted by biologists that environmental factors cause the diversity—or number—of species to increase before eventually leveling off. Some recent work, however, has suggested that species diversity continues instead of entering into a state of equilibrium. But new research on lizards in the Caribbean not only supports the original theory that finite space, limited food supplies, and competition for resources all work together to achieve equilibrium; it builds on the theory by extending it over a much longer timespan.
The research was done by Daniel Rabosky ...
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Less-invasive robotic surgery for upper airway and digestive track malignant tumors is as effective as other minimally invasive surgical techniques based on patient function and survival, according to University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers.
Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas account for about 4 percent of malignant tumors diagnosed in the United States each year. Currently the standard minimally invasive surgery for these tumors is transoral laser microsurgery.
Previous studies have shown that the robotic surgery was better for patients ...
What 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 and an inert gas called dinitrogen.
When summed across the globe, scientists report this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy ...
Increasing acidity in the sea's waters may fundamentally change how nitrogen is cycled in them, say marine scientists who published their findings in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients in the oceans. All organisms, from tiny microbes to blue whales, use nitrogen to make proteins and other important compounds.
Some microbes can also use different chemical forms of nitrogen as a source of energy.
One of these groups, the ammonia oxidizers, plays a pivotal role in determining ...
VIDEO:
Malaria-infected red blood cells can be 50 times stiffer and have surface changes that disrupt the smooth flow of blood, depriving the brain and other organs of nutrients and oxygen....
Click here for more information.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Although the incidence of malaria has declined in all but a few countries worldwide, according to a World Health Organization report earlier this month, malaria remains a global threat. Nearly 800,000 people ...
More effective risk-adjusted chemotherapy and sophisticated patient monitoring helped push cure rates to nearly 88 percent for older adolescents enrolled in a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treatment protocol and closed the survival gap between older and younger patients battling the most common childhood cancer.
A report online in the December 20 edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology noted that overall survival jumped 30 percent in the most recent treatment era for ALL patients who were age 15 through 18 when their cancer ...
