A Unifying Framework for Dinitrogen Fixation in the Terrestrial Biosphere

A Unifying Framework for Dinitrogen Fixation in the Terrestrial Biosphere

Houlton, Benjamin, Ying-Ping Wang, Peter M. Vitousek, and Christopher B. Field
Nature 454, no. 7202 (2008): 327-330

“The geographic occurrence of N2-fixing organisms in the open ocean and in lakes makes sense. Where nitrogen (N) is in low supply, N2 fixers have an advantage: they can fix N2 into biomass and thus grow faster than their competitors. In contrast, where N is abundant, N2 fixation is energetically costly and N2 fixers are competitively excluded by non-fixing species. N2-fixing organisms thereby bring the oceanic inventory of N into equilibrium with N losses over millennia, stabilizing nutrient demands of and supplies to marine primary producers. However, this paradigm is inadequate to predict the global distribution of N2 fixation in terrestrial environments.”

— Houlton et al.