The magazine of the european research area European Commission Copenhagen, a missed chance?

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Deserts threatened 

by nitrogen  

Researchers from Cornell Univer-

sity in New York (US) have made 

a discovery we could well have 

done without: the loss of nitrogen 

in arid soils. Their experiments in 

the Mojave Desert in the American 

West show that the lack of water 

coupled with high temperatures 

causes the loss of nitrogen that 

is released in the form of gas. 

As the water and nitrogen present 

in the soil are the two principal 

elements on which biological 

activity depends in desert soils, 

this means that the vegetation is 

doomed to become even poorer. 

The phenomenon also further 

feeds a vicious circle. Nitrogen 

causes an increase in tropospheric 

ozone concentrations that pollute 

the air and, most seriously, add 

to the greenhouse effect and 

in turn the warming responsible 

for climate change and the 

reduced rainfall in these regions. 

This type of abiotic, thus non-

biological, loss had not been 

envisaged previously when 

calculating the nitrogen balance. 

It is why scientists insisted that 

this new data should be included 

in the climate models.