Farm technology is reducing fertilizer pollution

Composing 78 percent of the air we breathe and present in all living things, nitrogen is a key element for plant growth. Although there’s plenty of nitrogen in the air, it doesn’t dissolve in rainwater; so plants can’t take it up through their roots. Instead, they get it from decaying organic matter, and from soil microbes (and lightning!), which combine nitrogen from the air with other elements to create nitrate and ammonium — the two forms of nitrogen plants DO take up. 
 
In the early 1900s, the Haber–Bosch process allowed us to transform nitrogen from the air into a form available to plants, creating fertilizer. Agriculture was revolutionized; we could now provide nitrogen to plants directly and increase agricultural productivity exponentially. But along with this came unforeseen environmental consequences, and the need to rethink our approaches. 
 
The process to create nitrogen fertilizer has a large carbon footprint. Although plants need nitrogen in large amounts, their needs vary with time, weather, and soil. Excess nitrogen can quickly escape to the environment as a greenhouse gas — nitrous oxide or laughing gas — or leach into the water table. 

Fertilizer pollution is a big problem that farmers and researchers are tackling together, across Canada and around the world. Some of the most promising solutions involve understanding exactly what crops need and when, and developing ways to provide them just that and no more.

Technology is helping us achieve this. For example, modern equipment that uses an in-tractor computer, GPS, and mapped field data to apply different amounts of fertilizer across the field — only where needed — provides more precision than ever before. Farmers now can reduce the amount of fertilizer applied while also reducing losses to the environment, while still maintaining and even improving yields. 

Thanks to evolving agricultural research and technology, we can implement farming practises that benefit our food supply while protecting its most valuable resource: the Earth. 

By Renée-Claude Goulet

How the albatross could report illegal fishing

Effective responses to environmental problems are often limited in terms of money, time, and the people required to implement them. So when a creative innovation takes flight, it’s particularly exciting.   

Consider the problem of overfishing, which occurs when sea life is caught faster than it can replenish, leading to the decline of populations and species. Overfishing is often related to another serious problem: bycatch. Even though fishing vessels target a particular species, unwanted species often end up caught in nets or traps, too. Since bycatch generally cannot be used, this causes tons of unnecessary deaths of sea creatures — including endangered whales, turtles, and sea birds.

How does a nation go about limiting overfishing and bycatch? It requires a huge amount of resources to monitor fishing vessels and patrol the oceans. Unfortunately, due to the vast expanse of the world’s oceans, it’s relatively easy for illegal fishing vessels to escape monitoring and break laws regarding when, where, and how they catch fish. Especially when they venture into the open ocean, which is not under the jurisdiction of any single nation. So what’s the solution?

One answer might be the wandering albatross. These incredible birds have 3.5 m wingspans – the length of a small car — which carry them over 8.5 million kilometers during their lifetimes (that’s like flying to the Moon and back 10 times!). Albatrosses patrol vast areas of the oceans searching for fish, and some researchers have realized that this behavior could also be used to monitor illegal fishing. 

Special data loggers attached to an albatross can be used to detect boat radar, which gives real-time data on boat locations. Initially, this data was used to reveal the flying and hunting patterns of albatrosses around fishing vessels. However, researchers realized that this data can be compared with data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to detect potential illegal activity. AIS is a system marine vessels use to detect each other and prevent collisions, and tends to be turned off if vessels want to avoid detection. In the Southern Ocean where the wandering albatrosses fly, this data has already provided an idea of the extent of illegal fishing. 

Albatrosses have been severely affected by bycatch in the past; as they take advantage of fish being brought to the surface, it’s easy for them to get caught in nets. This has contributed to the threatened or endangered status of most albatross species. Now, these birds could collect the very data needed for their own conservation and survival.

By Michelle Campbell Mekarski