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An Earth-system perspective of the global nitrogen cycle

With humans having an increasing impact on the planet, the interactions between the nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle and climate are expected to become an increasingly important determinant of the Earth system.

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Figure 1: Depiction of the global nitrogen cycle on land and in the ocean.
Figure 2: Changes in the climate system and the global nitrogen and carbon cycles over the past 75,000 years.
Figure 3: Nitrogen–carbon–climate interactions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by funds from ETH Zurich. We thank J. Flückiger for helping us with the ice-core records.

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Correspondence should be addressed to N.G. ([email protected]).

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Gruber, N., Galloway, J. An Earth-system perspective of the global nitrogen cycle. Nature 451, 293–296 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06592

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