ICR article image.
Posted on 11/05/2013 8:07:58 AM PST by fishtank
Newfound Nitrogen Harmony Saves Tropical Forest Trees
by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
New research shows that tropical forests quickly recover after clear-cutting by using clever mechanisms to locate sufficient levels of nitrogen that they need to thrive.
Publishing in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers representing Princeton University, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the University of Copenhagen, and Yale University tracked tropical forest growth. They paid particular attention to the growth-rate patterns of "nitrogen-fixing" trees.1 (Nitrogen fixation is the process whereby atmospheric nitrogen is converted into more usable compounds.)
Actually, the trees don't perform this "fixing" task alone but in intimate harmonious conjunction with forest soil microbes.2 It's a precision manufacturing process within certain plant roots that converts inert atmospheric nitrogen into an absorbable form.
The researchers offered two theories about how nitrogen-fixing trees help rebuild forests: 1) Perhaps the trees constantly fix nitrogen at a flat rate until neighboring trees outgrow and exclude them, or 2) as the forest matures over decades, different tree species scale their own nitrogen-fixing machinery up or down, as appropriate.
Reporting that the second theory lined up with their research, the Nature study authors found that some plants were "N2-fixing species that persist over time but that turn fixation on or off depending on their nitrogen balance."1
The authors called this "facultative fixation" and wrote, "These dynamics indicate that fixers can buffer forest nitrogen supply by upregulating fixation when nitrogen is low." In other words, these trees don't just have simple on/off switches—they use more complicated self-adjusting dimmer switches connected to nitrogen detectors as a means to control the nitrogen manufacturing pace. "[This] implies that the capacity is functionally ensured throughout forest succession," according to Nature.1
The authors further wrote, "Our findings identify an ecosystem-scale feedback between forest regrowth, vegetation nitrogen demand and the supply of new nitrogen ensured by N2 fixers."1
It's as though someone purposefully endowed plants and microbes not only with the miraculous machinery to convert nitrogen to a usable form at room temperatures and without caustic chemicals, but also with the ability to integrate them with dimmer-switch technology and feedback communication networks to ensure that tropical forests can proliferate—even after mankind entirely wipes them out.
Internal mechanisms—likely networks of biochemical machines—enable these trees to fix nitrogen, a suggestion with which the study authors would probably agree. And yet, they wrote, "The results imply that nitrogen limitation is the mechanism favouring fixers and fixation in young forests."1
Perhaps they intended to simply convey the idea that nitrogen is the key factor in the overarching ecological mechanism.
Their research focused on identifying environmental factors that affect forest regrowth. But this focus on external aspects may lead readers to quickly gloss over a more significant inference from their remarkable findings. These amazing trees work together over decades to regulate and maintain appropriate nitrogen levels in their own forest soils, showing an entire ecology organized to work in harmony and by design.3
References
Batterman, S. A. et al. 2013. Key role of symbiotic dinitrogen fixation in tropical forest secondary succession. Nature. 502 (7470): 224-227.
Thomas, B. Engineered Chemical Could Cost Less, Save Lives. Creation Science Update. Posted on icr.org September 27, 2013, accessed October 16, 2013.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on November 4, 2013.
ICR article image.
Maybe we can embrace the fact that CO2 is GOOD?
The only thing I didn’t like about this article:
This quote....
“It’s as though someone purposefully endowed plants and microbes not only with the miraculous machinery to convert nitrogen to a usable form at room temperatures and without caustic chemicals, but also with the ability to integrate them with dimmer-switch technology and feedback communication networks to ensure that tropical forests can proliferate—even after mankind entirely wipes them out.”
Sorry, but a forest fire caused by lightning strike can “wipe out” a forest quite fast .... mankind having nothing to do with that happening ....
Other than that ... GREAT literature review of current research.
CO2 is tree food.
It’s amazing what God has accomplished through time and evolution.
Well, in that case, nitrogen is the new carbon. What is your nitrogen footprint?
And all this time, I thought boron was the new carbon. Maybe it’s time for me to dust off the old periodic table.
Really? Human constructed Technology?
Plus it an be a good fiber in metal matrix.
Plus it can be a good fiber in metal matrix(s).
You mean like the Resurrection of Christ?
/sarc
Faith in evolution is more pitiful than faith in global warming.
In true tropical (no real dry season) forests, fires are generally rare and small.
However, there is good evidence, at least for the Amazon, that every few centuries they have a “mega-drought,” the forest dries out and incredibly massive fires result.
These mechanisms probably evolved to deal with these common (from a geological or ecological perspective) events. Though they work equally well for dealing with the disruptions created by men.
God allows everyone to witness his creation. Only a few were allowed to witness the resurrection of Christ.
There is another interesting fact about how our plant kingdom adapts to “change”, and it too was found an area of rain forests, in Brazil.
Researchers were examining fossil deposits of plant life from earlier eras of earth history.
One thing that is known about green plants that produce broad leaves, as opposed to needles, is that more plants with leaves that have smooth edges have different survival rates in higher temperatures than do leaves with spikey edges.
But, after radiocarbon dating the samples and noting the other factors that helped identify the climate at the time, including CO2 content, they found that in eras where the temperatures were very much hotter than today, globally, the varieties of plants they think of as disfavored by heat extremes was found as thriving in much higher numbers than standard beliefs today suggest possible.
They stated (it was on TV sometime this past weekend) that their findings will cause reconsideration of what current global warming theories say about reduction of earth’s vegattion due to warming.
Scientists have always called periods of warming “optimums” because living things proliferated in warmer temperatures.
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