(Press-News.org) It's no secret that China is faced with some of the world's worst pollution. Until now, however, information on the magnitude, scope and impacts of a major contributor to that pollution – human-caused nitrogen emissions – was lacking.
A new study co-authored by Stanford biology professor and Stanford Woods Institute senior fellow Peter Vitousek reveals that amounts of nitrogen (from industry, cars and fertilizer) deposited on land and water in China by way of rain, dust and other carriers increased by 60 percent annually from the 1980s to the 2000s, with profound consequences for the country's people and ecosystems.
Xuejun Liu and Fusuo Zhang at China Agricultural University in Beijing led the study, which is part of an ongoing collaboration with Stanford aimed at reducing agricultural nutrient pollution while increasing food production in China – a collaboration that includes Vitousek and Pamela Matson, dean of Stanford's School of Earth Sciences and a Stanford Woods Institute senior fellow.
The researchers analyzed all available data on bulk nitrogen deposition from monitoring sites throughout China from 1980 to 2010.
During the past 30 years, China has become by far the largest creator and emitter of nitrogen globally. The country's use of nitrogen as a fertilizer increased about threefold from the 1980s to 2000s, while livestock numbers and coal combustion increased about fourfold, and the number of automobiles about twentyfold (all of these activities release reactive nitrogen into the environment).
Increased levels of nitrogen have led to a range of deleterious impacts including decreased air quality, acidification of soil and water, increased greenhouse gas concentrations and reduced biological diversity.
"All these changes can be linked to a common driving factor: strong economic growth, which has led to continuous increases in agricultural and non-agricultural reactive nitrogen emissions and consequently increased nitrogen deposition," the study's authors write.
Researchers found highly significant increases in bulk nitrogen deposition since the 1980s in China's industrialized North, Southeast and Southwest. Nitrogen levels on the North China Plain are much higher than those observed in any region in the United States and are comparable to the maximum values observed in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands when nitrogen deposition was at its peak in the 1980s.
China's rapid industrialization and agricultural expansion have led to continuous increases in nitrogen emissions and nitrogen deposition. China's production and use of nitrogen-based fertilizers is greater than that of the United States and the European Union combined. Because of inefficiencies, more than half of that fertilizer is lost to the environment in gaseous or dissolved forms.
China's nitrogen deposition problem could be brought under control, the study's authors state, if the country's environmental policy focused on improving efficiency in agricultural use of nitrogen and reducing nitrogen emissions from all sources, including industry and transit.
###Rob Jordan is the communications writer for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He can be reached at (650) 721-1881 or rjordan@stanford.edu.
Stanford scientists help shed light on key component of China's pollution problem
2013-02-26
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Researchers at the UH Cancer Center discover protein that may control the spread of cancer
2013-02-26
HONOLULU, HI - Researchers at the University of Hawai'i Cancer Center have uncovered a novel mechanism that may lead to more selective ways to stop cancer cells from spreading. Associate Professor Joe W. Ramos PhD, a cancer biologist at the UH Cancer Center and his team have identified the role of the protein RSK2 in cancer cell migration, part of the process of cancer metastasis.
Cancer becomes metastatic when cells break away from the primary tumor and spread to other parts of the body. Metastatic cancer is much more difficult to treat and patients with metastatic ...
Electronic health communications often unavilable to lower income patients
2013-02-26
Lower-income patients want to communicate electronically with their doctors, but the revolution in health care technology often is not accessible to them, due to inadequate health information services within the health care clinics they frequent, according to a survey by UC San Francisco researchers.
Increasing numbers of health care systems are offering online services to patients in order to manage care outside of office visits, and this often includes the ability for patients to communicate electronically with health care providers.
The UCSF research team found that ...
Protecting health care workers
2013-02-26
Health care workers who consistently wear special fitted face masks while on duty are much less likely to get clinical respiratory and bacterial infections, according to new research led by University of New South Wales (UNSW) academics.
The results, published in The American Journal of Critical Care Medicine, are particularly significant with the threat of possible pandemics and severe flu seasons, such as the current outbreak in the United States.
"When there are no drugs and vaccines available, sometimes for months at a time, then all you have is masks," says the ...
US budget cuts could jeopardize development of life-saving tools against major killers
2013-02-26
Washington, DC (26 February 2013)—Across-the-board cuts to US R&D programs could have a devastating impact on efforts to develop new drugs for tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS, the world's first malaria vaccine, and other vital global health products in development, according to a new report from a coalition of nonprofit groups focused on advancing innovation to save lives.
"We know that policymakers are currently facing difficult budget decisions. But any reductions in funds could eliminate essential support for the development of global health tools and slow or halt the ...
Women's iron intake may help to protect against PMS
2013-02-26
AMHERST, Mass. – Women who reported eating a diet rich in iron were 30 to 40 percent less likely to develop pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS) than women who consumed lower amounts, in a study reported this week by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences and Harvard. It is one of the first to evaluate whether dietary mineral intake is associated with PMS development.
Senior author Elizabeth Bertone-Johnson and others at UMass Amherst, with lead author Patricia Chocano-Bedoya and colleagues at Harvard, assessed mineral ...
Eat too much? Maybe it's in the blood
2013-02-26
HOUSTON – (Feb. 26, 2013) – Bone marrow cells that produce brain-derived eurotrophic factor (BDNF), known to affect regulation of food intake, travel to part of the hypothalamus in the brain where they "fine-tune" appetite, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Shiga University of Medical Science in Otsu, Shiga, Japan, in a report that appears online in the journal Nature Communications.
"We knew that blood cells produced BDNF," said Dr. Lawrence Chan, professor of molecular and cellular biology and professor and chief of the division of diabetes, endocrinology ...
Report: 'Water and Agriculture in Canada: Towards Sustainable Management of Water Resources'
2013-02-26
Ottawa (February 26th, 2013) – Canadian agriculture is faced with great opportunities, but also challenged by water-related risks and uncertainties. An expert panel convened by the Council of Canadian Academies has found that water and land resources in Canada can be more sustainably managed by developing forward-thinking policies and effective land and water management strategies, adopting effective governance mechanisms, and harnessing technological advancements.
The agricultural sector is an important contributor to Canada's prosperity and well-being. In 2011, primary ...
Now hear this: Stanford researchers identify forerunners of inner-ear cells that enable hearing
2013-02-26
STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a group of progenitor cells in the inner ear that can become the sensory hair cells and adjacent supporting cells that enable hearing. Studying these progenitor cells could someday lead to discoveries that help millions of Americans suffering from hearing loss due to damaged or impaired sensory hair cells.
"It's well known that, in mammals, these specialized sensory cells don't regenerate after damage," said Alan Cheng, MD, assistant professor of otolaryngology. (In contrast, ...
Researchers find controlling element of Huntington's disease
2013-02-26
Huntington's disease, also known as Huntington's chorea, is a hereditary brain disease causing movement disorders and dementia. In Germany, there are about 8,000 patients affected by Huntington's disease, with several hundred new cases arising every year. The disease usually manifests between the ages of 35 and 50. To date, it is incurable and inevitably leads to death. It is caused by a specific genetic defect: In the patient's DNA, which is the carrier of genetic information, there are multiple copies of a certain motif. "Repeats like this are also found in healthy people. ...
'Fat worms' inch scientists toward better biofuel production
2013-02-26
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Fat worms confirm that researchers from Michigan State University have successfully engineered a plant with oily leaves -- a feat that could enhance biofuel production as well as lead to improved animal feeds.
The results, published in the current issue of The Plant Cell, the journal of the American Society of Plant Biologists, show that researchers could use an algae gene involved in oil production to engineer a plant that stores lipids or vegetable oil in its leaves – an uncommon occurrence for most plants.
Traditional biofuel research has focused ...