Nitrogen is one of the most important elements found in fertilizers for plant growth because it is often that soil may be lacking it. When nitrogen is added to soil outdoors, it becomes a part of the complex nitrogen cycle that passes through life on earth. The nitrogen cycle may begin with gaseous nitrogen in the atmosphere. Often unnoticed, nitrogen is at a high concentration in the air we breathe compared to oxygen. The atmospheric nitrogen is in its diatomic form, N2. From here, nitrogen can be deposited by lightning or it is fixed by nitrogen-fixing bacteria and microbes in the soil that turn it into nitrates and ammonium. The ammonium can be made into nitrites by other nitrifying bacteria. From there, plants take up the nitrates and use it in chemical processes and in different molecules. The nitrogen travels up the food chain and gets deposited by different organisms back into the soil by waste products or by decay and decomposition. The decomposers then transform the nitrates back into ammonium in the soil. Denitrifying bacteria then transform nitrates back into atmospheric nitrogen when oxygen levels are low, reducing the mitrogen in the soil and increasing the nitrogen in the atmosphere. The cycle then repeats.
Recent comments