A Unifying Framework for Ninitrogen 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.”
Daily, Gretchen C., Tore Söderqvist, Sara Aniyar, Kenneth Arrow, Partha Dasgupta, Paul R. Ehrlich, Carl Folke et al.
Science 289, no. 5478 (2000): 395-396