The Marine Nitrogen Cycle : Overview and Challenges
2008
This chapter serves as an introduction to rest of the book. The focus here is on providing an overview of the most important pools of
nitrogen, their transformations, their distribution, and their connection to the cycling of other biogeochemically relevant elements, primarily carbon, oxygen, and phosphorus. The scale is global, as subsequent chapters cover individual
ocean basinsand systems. The chapter also addresses a series of
nitrogenchallenges, such as the question of how the marine
nitrogen cycleappears to be able to maintain a relatively well-established homeostasis, that is, a balance between gains and losses of fixed
nitrogen. Finally, it discusses the anthropogenic perturbation of the marine
nitrogen cycle. As it examines, however, the answers to many of these questions remain elusive, reminding us how little we know about the marine
nitrogen cycle, and how much still remains to be discovered. Although the marine
nitrogen cycleoccupies a central role within the
biogeochemical cyclesof the sea, scientific communities barely begin to its major processes and the factors that regulate them. This occurs at a time when human interventions in the
Earth systemrise to unprecedented levels, with a particularly strong impact on the global
nitrogen cycle.
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