Journal article
Nitrogen footprints: Regional realities and options to reduce nitrogen loss to the environment
Hideaki Shibata, James N Galloway, Allison M Leach, Lia R Cattaneo, Laura Cattell Noll, Jan Willem Erisman, Baojing Gu, Xia Liang, Kentaro Hayashi, Lin Ma, Tommy Dalgaard, Morten Graversgaard, Deli Chen, Keisuke Nansai, Junko Shindo, Kazuyo Matsubae, Azusa Oita, Ming-Chien Su, Shin-Ichiro Mishima, Albert Bleeker
Ambio | SPRINGER | Published : 2017
Abstract
Nitrogen (N) management presents a sustainability dilemma: N is strongly linked to energy and food production, but excess reactive N causes environmental pollution. The N footprint is an indicator that quantifies reactive N losses to the environment from consumption and production of food and the use of energy. The average per capita N footprint (calculated using the N-Calculator methodology) of ten countries varies from 15 to 47 kg N capita-1 year-1. The major cause of the difference is the protein consumption rates and food production N losses. The food sector dominates all countries' N footprints. Global connections via trade significantly affect the N footprint in countries that rely on ..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all participants of the International Nitrogen Footprint Workshop held in Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan in March 16- 18th, 2015 for helping to develop this manuscript. We also would like to thank the funding support for the workshop from The KAITEKI Institute Inc., Japan; Green Network of Excellence -Environmental information (funded by Ministry of Education,Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan); National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, Japan; National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan; Ministry of Education, Taiwan; National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan; Advanced Research and Education Center for Steel ( ARECS), Tohoku University, Japan. This research was also partly supported by Science and technology research promotion program for agriculture, forestry, fisheries and food industry; Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (S-15) of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan. This is a contribution to the N-PRINT project ( www. n- print. org), the www. dNmark. org research alliance, and to the International Nitrogen Initiative ( www. initrogen. org).