Nitrogen Cycle
Human industrial nitrogen fixation (Haber-Bosch process) now exceeds natural fixation globally.
Nitrogen exemplifies nutrient cycling's complexity and importance. Nitrogen is essential for life - a primary constituent of amino acids, proteins, nucleic acids, and other biomolecules - but most nitrogen exists in a form organisms cannot use: atmospheric nitrogen gas (N₂), comprising 78% of Earth's atmosphere. The triple covalent bond in N₂ is extraordinarily stable, requiring enormous energy to break.
The nitrogen cycle proceeds through multiple transformations: Nitrogen fixation (specialized bacteria convert N₂ to NH₃), Assimilation (plants absorb fixed nitrogen as NH₄⁺ or NO₃⁻), Ammonification (decomposers break down organic nitrogen into NH₃/NH₄⁺), Nitrification (bacteria oxidize NH₄⁺ to NO₃⁻), and Denitrification (bacteria reduce NO₃⁻ back to N₂ gas under anaerobic conditions).
Business Application of Nitrogen Cycle
The nitrogen cycle demonstrates that biological mediation drives transformations, materials cycle through multiple chemical forms, systems have leakage points where resources exit, and mature ecosystems achieve increasingly closed internal cycling. Human industrial nitrogen fixation (Haber-Bosch process) now exceeds natural fixation globally.
Discovery
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch (1913)
The Haber-Bosch process for industrial nitrogen fixation transformed world food production and now exceeds natural fixation globally