Title: Fertilizer
Content: already existing amount of reactive nitrogen, nitrous oxide (NO) has become the third most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane. It has a global warming potential 296 times larger than an equal mass of carbon dioxide and it also contributes to stratospheric ozone depletion. By changing processes and procedures, it is possible to mitigate some, but not all, of these effects on anthropogenic climate change. Methane emissions from crop fields (notably rice paddy fields) are increased by the application of ammonium-based fertilizers. These emissions contribute to global climate change as methane is a potent greenhouse gas. In Europe

Title: Fertilizer
Content: The greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are produced during the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer. The effects can be combined into an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. The amount varies according to the efficiency of the process. The figure for the United Kingdom is over 2 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide equivalent for each kilogramme of ammonium nitrate. Nitrogen fertilizer can be converted by soil bacteria to nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Through the increasing use of nitrogen fertilizer, which was used at a rate of about 110 million tons (of N) per year in 2012, adding to the

Title: Human impact on the nitrogen cycle
Content: fossil fuel and biomass combustion. In agroecosystems, fertilizer application has increased microbial nitrification (aerobic process in which microorganisms oxidize ammonium [NH] to nitrate [NO]) and denitrification (anaerobic process in which microorganisms reduce NO to atmospheric nitrogen gas [N]). Both processes naturally leak nitric oxide (NO) and nitrous oxide (NO) to the atmosphere. Of particular concern is NO, which has an average atmospheric lifetime of 114–120 years, and is 300 times more effective than CO as a greenhouse gas. NO produced by industrial processes, automobiles and agricultural fertilization and NH emitted from soils (i.e., as an additional byproduct of nitrification) and

Title: Soil
Content: by their incorporation into the microbes' living cells, where it is temporarily sequestered in the form of amino acids and protein. Nitrate may also be lost from the soil when bacteria metabolise it to the gases N and NO. The loss of gaseous forms of nitrogen to the atmosphere due to microbial action is called "denitrification". Nitrogen may also be "leached" from the soil if it is in the form of nitrate or lost to the atmosphere as ammonia due to a chemical reaction of ammonium with alkaline soil by way of a process called "volatilisation". Ammonium may also be

Title: Planetary boundaries
Content: the atmosphere in changed forms, or accumulates in the terrestrial biosphere." Only a small part of the fertilizers applied in agriculture is used by plants. Most of the nitrogen and phosphorus ends up in rivers, lakes and the sea, where excess amounts stress aquatic ecosystems. For example, fertilizer which discharges from rivers into the Gulf of Mexico has damaged shrimp fisheries because of hypoxia. The biogeochemist William Schlesinger thinks waiting until we near some suggested limit for nitrogen deposition and other pollutions will just permit us to continue to a point where it is too late. He says the boundary

Question: Which gas in the atmosphere can be turned into fertilizer by some microbes?
Answer: Nitrogen