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The Nitrogen Cycle
Getting nitrogen into living organisms is difficult. Plants and phytoplankton are not equipped to incorporate nitrogen from the atmosphere (where it exists as tightly bonded, triple covalent N2) even though this molecule comprises approximately 78 percent of the atmosphere. Nitrogen enters the living world through free-living and symbiotic bacteria, which incorporate nitrogen into their organic molecules through specialized biochemical processes.
Certain species of bacteria are able to perform nitrogen fixation, the process of converting nitrogen gas into ammonia (NH3), which spontaneously becomes ammonium (NH4+). Ammonium is converted by bacteria into nitrites (NO2−) and then nitrates (NO3−). At this point, the nitrogen-containing molecules are used by plants and other producers to make organic molecules such as DNA and proteins. This nitrogen is now available to consumers.
Organic nitrogen is especially important to the study of ecosystem dynamics because many ecosystem processes, such as primary production, are limited by the available supply of nitrogen. As shown in Figure 3 below, the nitrogen that enters living systems is eventually converted from organic nitrogen back into nitrogen gas by bacteria (Figure 3).
The process of denitrification is when bacteria convert the nitrates into nitrogen gas, thus allowing it to re-enter the atmosphere. Human activity can alter the nitrogen cycle by two primary means: the combustion of fossil fuels, which releases different nitrogen oxides, and by the use of artificial fertilizers (which contain nitrogen and phosphorus compounds) in agriculture, which are then washed into lakes, streams, and rivers by surface runoff.
Atmospheric nitrogen (other than N2) is associated with several effects on Earth’s ecosystems including the production of acid rain (as nitric acid, HNO3) and greenhouse gas effects (as nitrous oxide, N2O), potentially causing climate change. A major effect from fertilizer runoff is saltwater and freshwater eutrophication, a process whereby nutrient runoff causes the overgrowth of algae, the depletion of oxygen, and death of aquatic fauna.
In marine ecosystems, nitrogen compounds created by bacteria, or through decomposition, collects in ocean floor sediments. It can then be moved to land in geologic time by uplift of Earth’s crust and thereby incorporated into terrestrial rock.
Although the movement of nitrogen from rock directly into living systems has been traditionally seen as insignificant compared with nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere, a recent study showed that this process may indeed be significant and should be included in any study of the global nitrogen cycle.
Figure 3. Nitrogen enters the living world from the atmosphere via nitrogen-fixing bacteria. This nitrogen and nitrogenous waste from animals is then processed back into gaseous nitrogen by soil bacteria, which also supply terrestrial food webs with the organic nitrogen they need.