Why is nitrogen abundant

Due to the water cycle , the amount of water in the air is constantly changing. The concentration of water vapor decreases drastically with altitude. The upper troposphere has considerably less water vapor than air near the surface, the stratosphere and mesosphere have almost no water vapor, and the thermosphere contains none at all. Air also contains tiny solid particles called aerosols , such as dust, sea salt, and ash from erupting volcanoes or forest fires. Many of these particles are so small that they are microscopic.

Others are large enough to see. Aerosols affect climate by helping clouds form and shading the planet by scattering or absorbing sunlight. In the last century, manufacturing and widespread use of combustion engines have increased the number of aerosols in the atmosphere as particulate matter spews from smokestacks and exhaust pipes. Burning wood and other materials also add particles to the air. Like everything on Earth, the air is made of chemicals.

Many of these chemical reactions help maintain healthy natural environments and are vital for plants and animals. Nitrogen gas in the atmosphere does almost nothing, but nitrogen elsewhere on Earth is essential for life. Why the temperature of the air in the atmosphere hotter in summer than in winter?

Why does the atmosphere appear blue? What is the function of the atmosphere? See all questions in The Atmosphere. Impact of this question views around the world. You can reuse this answer Creative Commons License. The third stage, nitrification, also occurs in soils. Nitrates can be used by plants and animals that consume the plants. Some bacteria in the soil can turn ammonia into nitrites.

Although nitrite is not usable by plants and animals directly, other bacteria can change nitrites into nitrates—a form that is usable by plants and animals. This reaction provides energy for the bacteria engaged in this process.

The bacteria that we are talking about are called nitrosomonas and nitrobacter. Nitrobacter turns nitrites into nitrates; nitrosomonas transform ammonia to nitrites. Both kinds of bacteria can act only in the presence of oxygen, O 2 [ 7 ]. The process of nitrification is important to plants, as it produces an extra stash of available nitrogen that can be absorbed by the plants through their root systems. The fourth stage of the nitrogen cycle is immobilization, sometimes described as the reverse of mineralization.

These two processes together control the amount of nitrogen in soils. Just like plants, microorganisms living in the soil require nitrogen as an energy source. These soil microorganisms pull nitrogen from the soil when the residues of decomposing plants do not contain enough nitrogen. Immobilization, therefore, ties up nitrogen in microorganisms. However, immobilization is important because it helps control and balance the amount of nitrogen in the soils by tying it up, or immobilizing the nitrogen, in microorganisms.

In the fifth stage of the nitrogen cycle, nitrogen returns to the air as nitrates are converted to atmospheric nitrogen N 2 by bacteria through the process we call denitrification.

This results in an overall loss of nitrogen from soils, as the gaseous form of nitrogen moves into the atmosphere, back where we began our story. The cycling of nitrogen through the ecosystem is crucial for maintaining productive and healthy ecosystems with neither too much nor too little nitrogen.

Plant production and biomass living material are limited by the availability of nitrogen. Understanding how the plant-soil nitrogen cycle works can help us make better decisions about what crops to grow and where to grow them, so we have an adequate supply of food.

Knowledge of the nitrogen cycle can also help us reduce pollution caused by adding too much fertilizer to soils. As you have seen, not enough nitrogen in the soils leaves plants hungry, while too much of a good thing can be bad: excess nitrogen can poison plants and even livestock! Pollution of our water sources by surplus nitrogen and other nutrients is a huge problem, as marine life is being suffocated from decomposition of dead algae blooms.

Farmers and communities need to work to improve the uptake of added nutrients by crops and treat animal manure waste properly. We also need to protect the natural plant buffer zones that can take up nitrogen runoff before it reaches water bodies. But, our current patterns of clearing trees to build roads and other construction worsen this problem, because there are fewer plants left to uptake excess nutrients.

We need to do further research to determine which plant species are best to grow in coastal areas to take up excess nitrogen. Every week, Guardian science blogger GrrlScientist introduces a new chemical element, with help from The Periodic Table of Videos — a collaboration between the University of Nottingham's School of Chemistry and video journalist Brady Haran.

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