Today we will take account of other news released to great fanfare in the rotary press.This is the i ncremento in emissions of nitrous oxide (a potent greenhouse gas)from European forest soils into the atmosphere . Not address the issue in depth because we treat previously (see related post below) and there is a good blog on the subject of CSIC , whose address is also included. Just show you what the news does not reveal, namely, what is the true significance treasures .

The explanation offered by the original study the Spanish press is bad, while in ScienceDaily (acceptable). Since the dawn of industrial agriculture, the abuses of fertilization of soils have severely damaged the agricultural and pastoral ecosystems. Rarely fertilize forests, however are in one way or another, mostly in the form of depositions atmospheric part of the agricultural and livestock amendments and other from the transport and industri to . This leads to increasing global warming and to increase the loss of soil biodiversity and vegetation . If so, what new treasures the news?

My friend longed Choni, an expert in natural meadows , I said at the beginning of the decade of the 90s of last century, as l I plant ecologists whites were extremely interested in the composition of the hay meadows of the Cantabrian coast and the Pyrenees . When I asked why, she replied that: most of which formerly were scattered in the countries of the European Union had disappeared due to growing foreign varieties and over-paid on the basis of nitrogen and phosphorus. I’m talking about 20 or 25 years .

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By over-fertilization and other industrial practices have been increasing the concentration of reactive nitrogen in the atmosphere , influencing warming of the last . Such a process, “ not appear to increase the uptake of atmospheric carbon , “as science presupposed. Quite the contrary, the incorporation of nitrogen into the soil ends up altering the composition of microbial communities that houses the chemistry of the soil environment and ecosystem composition . Finally, while nitrous oxide returns to the atmosphere, plants associated with the species of microorganisms that fix, or other species of bacteria that make it free, are at a competitive disadvantage and may end up extinct .

A long, when such depositions down the affected ecosystems suffer more difficulties in order to obtain this form bioasimilable molecule . As I narrate in another post, such harmful alteration of the nitrogen cycle has been well documented in the woods, meadows and pastures undertemperate climate . Today’s news gives us that the same appears to be occurring in the tropical forests of Panama, Brazil and SE Asia. Fertilization is a pollutant that can end up making many tropical tree species disappear fixing this element , such as the Fabaceae .

Meanwhile, our industrial society remains in further increase their concentrations in the atmosphere. We know very well that the pollution emitted by industrialized countries harms biodiversity thousands of miles away. And so today, tropical soils may have tripled emissions of reactive nitrogen to the atmosphere , promoting climate change. ’Another form of bioterrorism for?   

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It is hard to believe that the news that we offer today passed almost unnoticed. I honestly do not know what to think: Is the tragedy suffered by Japan after the accident at the nuclear power Fukusima ends or begins right?   The press release that we offer today reports that a third of the country’s soil is contaminated byCesium-137 . The 33 percent of the surface of Japan makes an amount more than alarming .Personally I fear produces. And as happened in the crash of Chernobyl , the authorities never told the truth in order to avoid alarm in the population , although the problem appears to be similar.

Finally it is possible that as happened after the Chernobyl accident mented, especially due to soil contamination by cesium-137 , The area around Chernobyl will never be fit for human beings . timely decontamination of the soil of a country feasible , using procedures generally “ex situ”. But carrying out such process becomes a huge extensions all in an almost impossible task . On this occasion would have to move millions of tons of contaminated soil decontamination plants.

One third of the soil of a country!. Everything depends on the level and type of radionuclides that eventually house the ground. However, as already denounced my sister,in this post, the falsehoods that usually pour the authorities concerned in order to reassure the public are impressive, with Chernobyl in glaring example of this. Food sovereignty of Japan could be seriously threatened, as also the health of millions. But where are the reliable data serve to clarify the magnitude of the problem?

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