Food benefit and climate warming potential of nitrogen fertilizer uses in China
Name
Tian-2012-Food benefit and climate warming potential of nitrogen fertilizer uses in China.pdf
Size
1.52 MB
Format
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Tian, Hanqin
Lu, Chaoqun
Melillo, Jerry M.
Ren, Wei
Huang, Yao
Xu, Xiaofeng
Liu, Mingliang
Zhang, Chi
Chen, Guangsheng
Pan, Shufen
Date Issued
October 2012
Journal
Environmental Research Letters
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Tian, Hanqin et al. “Food Benefit and Climate Warming Potential of Nitrogen Fertilizer Uses in China.” Environmental Research Letters 7.4 (2012): 044020.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Chemical nitrogen (N) fertilizer has long been used to help meet the increasing food demands in China, the top N fertilizer consumer in the world. Growing concerns have been raised on the impacts of N fertilizer uses on food security and climate change, which is lack of quantification. Here we use a carbon–nitrogen (C–N) coupled ecosystem model, to quantify the food benefit and climate consequence of agronomic N addition in China over the six decades from 1949 to 2008. Results show that N fertilizer-induced crop yield and soil C sequestration had reached their peaks, while nitrous oxide (N[subscript 2]O) emission continued rising as N was added. Since the early 2000s, stimulation of excessive N fertilizer uses to global climate warming through N[subscript 2]O emission was estimated to outweigh their climate benefit in increasing CO[subscript 2] uptake. The net warming effect of N fertilizer uses, mainly centered in the North China Plain and the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River Basin, with N[subscript 2]O emission completely counteracting or even exceeding, by more than a factor of 2, the CO[subscript 2] sink. If we reduced the current N fertilizer level by 60% in 'over-fertilized' areas, N[subscript 2]O emission would substantially decrease without significantly influencing crop yield and soil C sequestration.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Joint Program on the Science & Policy of Global Change
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044020
