Nitrate, Agriculture and the Environment
Author: T.M. Addiscott
Readership
Advanced students in soil, crop, environmental and pollution sciences.
Main Description
This book addresses the widespread public concern about the effects of nitrate derived from farming, on water quality and public health. It begins by examining the reasons for nitrogen fertilizer use and how nitrate escapes from arable and grassland systems. The book then moves on to discuss ecological changes in coastal and estuarine water caused by nitrate, and the threat to the ozone layer caused by nitrous oxide. It also reviews the existing research on the effects of nitrate on health. The book builds on Farming, Fertilizers and the Nitrate Problem (CABI, 1991) by Addiscott, Whitmore and Powlson, and has been revised to take account of new developments and to bring out more clearly the role of politicians and economists in the 'nitrate problem'. It concludes that there are wide discrepancies between public perceptions and reality.
Main Contents
• Dependance on Nitrogen
• The Chemistry and Physics of Nitrate
• The Biology of Nitrate
• Nitrogen Fertilizer
• Losses of Nitrogen from Arable Land
• Losses of Nitrogen from Grassland
• Nitrate in Freshwater and Nitrous Oxide in the Atmosphere, A J Gold, University Rhode Island, Kingston, USA and C A Oviatt, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, USA
• Nitrate in Coastal Waters, A J Gold and C A Oviatt
• Nitrate and Health, N Benjamin, Peninsular Medical School, Plymouth, UK
• The Politics and Economics of Nitrate
• Nitrate in Africa: The 'Western Hegemony', K Giller, Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands
• Risk
• Coming to Terms with Nitrate: Public Attitudes to Science
• Coming to Terms with Nitrate: Land Use
Reviews
• ...possibly the most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date.
• Although the text is entirely accessible to undergraduate students, few colleages will fail to find novelty in the range of topics covered and specialist N researchers will welcome the chance to absorb the wider context of their subject.
S D Young, Agricultural Science, Vol 144 - 2006
