|
|
|
Nitrogen is the new carbon.
“In 10 years, we won’t be talking about global warming, we’ll be talking about nitrogen,” Jay Ham, a meteorology and environmental expert in the soil and crop sciences department at Colorado State University said. “It’s a way bigger issue.”
Everyone’s heard about minimizing their carbon footprint, sequestering carbon or trading carbon credits. But nitrogen, which converts into a particle capable of traveling long distances when it escapes into the atmosphere, is getting more attention in Colorado and around the country.
During the Colorado Ag Classic, Ham explained that nitrogen is a greenhouse gas 300 times more efficient at trapping atmospheric radiation than carbon dioxide. It impairs visibility and interferes with plant and animal life. The level of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere has increased 20 percent over the last century.
Studies dating back to the 1980s are documenting rising levels of nitrogen in Rocky Mountain National Park, a trend also seen in high alpine lakes in other parts of the world. The National Park Service has reported increases in nitrogen-rich ammonium affecting ecosystems in 16 parks across the country.
Agriculture, which uses and produces various forms of nitrogen, is being blamed for about 70 percent of it.
In Colorado, park officials say the rising concentration of nitrogen in rain and snow eventually leaches into lakes and streams and impairs aquatic species like mountain trout. They’ve set a goal to cut deposits of airborne nitrogen in half over the next 25 years.
In response, the state’s public health department put together an initiative to study and recommend actions to improve air quality. The initiative includes an agricultural working group with about 30 to 40 agricultural representatives who meet quarterly to look for ways to improve nitrogen use efficiency in the industry.
“We want it to be voluntary rather than regulatory,” said Phyllis Woodford, program manager for the Office of Environmental Integration and Sustainability in the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment, who also spoke at the Colorado Ag Classic.
Dan Anderson, who farms wheat, corn, millet and sunflowers near Haxtun on a third generation family farm, said he first heard about the issue two and a half years ago. His brother and business partner Dave is a wheat industry leader and serves on the industry working group.
“I do think there’s a threat EPA could come in and say we’ll need to regulate this somehow,” Anderson said. “We need to be proactive.”
Nitrogen is the new carbon.
“In 10 years, we won’t be talking about global warming, we’ll be talking about nitrogen,” Jay Ham, a meteorology and environmental expert in the soil and crop sciences department at Colorado State University said. “It’s a way bigger issue.”
Everyone’s heard about minimizing their carbon footprint, sequestering carbon or trading carbon credits. But nitrogen, which converts into a particle capable of traveling long distances when it escapes into the atmosphere, is getting more attention in Colorado and around the country.
During the Colorado Ag Classic, Ham explained that nitrogen is a greenhouse gas 300 times more efficient at trapping atmospheric radiation than carbon dioxide. It impairs visibility and interferes with plant and animal life. The level of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere has increased 20 percent over the last century.
Studies dating back to the 1980s are documenting rising levels of nitrogen in Rocky Mountain National Park, a trend also seen in high alpine lakes in other parts of the world. The National Park Service has reported increases in nitrogen-rich ammonium affecting ecosystems in 16 parks across the country.
Agriculture, which uses and produces various forms of nitrogen, is being blamed for about 70 percent of it.
In Colorado, park officials say the rising concentration of nitrogen in rain and snow eventually leaches into lakes and streams and impairs aquatic species like mountain trout. They’ve set a goal to cut deposits of airborne nitrogen in half over the next 25 years.
In response, the state’s public health department put together an initiative to study and recommend actions to improve air quality. The initiative includes an agricultural working group with about 30 to 40 agricultural representatives who meet quarterly to look for ways to improve nitrogen use efficiency in the industry.
“We want it to be voluntary rather than regulatory,” said Phyllis Woodford, program manager for the Office of Environmental Integration and Sustainability in the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment, who also spoke at the Colorado Ag Classic.
Dan Anderson, who farms wheat, corn, millet and sunflowers near Haxtun on a third generation family farm, said he first heard about the issue two and a half years ago. His brother and business partner Dave is a wheat industry leader and serves on the industry working group.
“I do think there’s a threat EPA could come in and say we’ll need to regulate this somehow,” Anderson said. “We need to be proactive.”
Improving management practices
Ham attributes half of agricultural nitrogen to concentrated animal feeding operations and another quarter of it to farm fertilizer.
“In some crop and livestock systems, we’re removing 20 to 30 percent of the nitrogen we’re applying,” he said. “We can lose it to air or to water. So one thing we can do is to improve agricultural efficiency.”
There are three main ways to keep nitrogen from escaping into the atmosphere, Ham said. They include reducing inputs, retaining more of the nitrogen in the finished product or storing it on-farm.
The agriculture industry has an economic incentive to improve nitrogen efficiency and is already making strides in that area.
Ham points out that corn yields have increased dramatically using similar rates of nitrogen fertilizer. Anderson adds that anhydrous is injected directly into the ground with minimal exposure to the air. Nitrogen is also sometimes applied through watering systems, which minimizes waste. His brother Dave points out that Colorado’s soils and climate are conducive to storing nitrogen, which could lead to future revenue streams.
While the manufacture and application of nitrogen generates emissions, it’s necessary to feeding the world’s growing population, he added.
Only about 7 percent of applied nitrogen fertilizer is lost to the atmosphere, Ham said.
By contrast, his studies of livestock systems show livestock efficiency rates to be roughly reversed. Animals on feed retain about 13 percent of the nitrogen they consume, with the rest rapidly lost to the environment.
Studies on livestock diets show big nitrogen savings are possible with minimal effects on gain and performance, he said.
He points out that dried distillers grains with solubles, or DDGS, a popular feed by-product created by the ethanol industry, increases crude protein, ammonia emissions and nitrogen waste.
Understanding climatic variables could also bring big savings. “Nitrogen is not lost to the atmosphere in the fall and winter, it’s released in the spring when you have a lot of wind movement toward the park,” Ham said. “We can measure the nitrogen coming down, and it’s episodic, a big pulse coming down all at once.”
Ham would like to see the state develop a “meteorological warning system” for periods when temperatures and seasonal wind patterns make nitrogen deposition most likely. During an 18-year career with Kansas State University, he was involved with creating similar meteorological warning models to manage the impact of range burning in the Flint Hills.
Mounds of dirt in feedyard pens, which are an effective way to store large amounts of nitrogen, could be broken up and removed when air movement is minimal. Spreading manure at night is potentially another way to reduce negative impacts, Ham said.
Ag holding the bag?
Experts like Ham admit considerable uncertainty surrounds the current figures regarding which industries contribute to excess nitrogen in the atmosphere. Other sources that are likely under-estimated include oil and gas development, wastewater treatment and use of nitrogen in municipal landscapes, Ham noted.
“Ag is a low-hanging target because there isn’t a lot of regulation around it,” Woodford added.
Some studies are helping vindicate the ag industry. Experts have learned that most of the nitrogen in Rocky Mountain National Park is migrating — not from the Corn Belt, as initially suspected — but from the Western states of California and Nevada.
Further afield, China is responsible for emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases, Ham added.
“They’ve done some studies that have taken the focus off of agriculture,” he said.
Colorado is “ground zero” for studying air quality issues, according to Ham, which is why the son of a feedyard manager seized the chance to join the Colorado State faculty. He is part of CSU’s Institute for Livestock and the Environment, which aims to balance ag production with sustainable environmental management.
