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| ELSA Studentship: Closing the agricultural nitrogen and phosphorus cycles: Towards sustainable food production for 2050 | ||||||||||||
Feeding the 9 billion people that will be alive in 2050 poses a major challenge for science and society. Doing it in a long-term sustainable way adds considerably to the challenge. More sustainable future agriculture will need to move away from energy-intensive industrial fixation of nitrate, and mining of finite reserves of phosphate, toward more materially closed, recycling agro-ecosystems. These will likely be based more strongly on biological than industrial nitrogen fixation, through crop rotation with legumes and/or genetically-engineered nitrogen fixing cereals. They will also involve much more efficient utilization of nitrogen and phosphorus by crops, and increased recycling of these nutrients back to the land from animal manure and perhaps also human waste. This project will address what is a future sustainable agricultural system with a particular focus on the inputs and cycling of nitrogen and phosphorus. The aim will be to assess the potential for increasing the intensity of food production whilst meeting key sustainability goals, including; (i) reducing dependence on finite reserves of phosphate rock as fertilizer, (ii) reducing emissions of potent greenhouse gases, especially nitrous oxide (N2O), and (iii) reducing the leaching of nitrate and phosphate into freshwater ecosystems and coastal seas. The research will involve data gathering and analysis to build up a model of current and alternative agricultural nutrient systems, their food yields, and their associated waste products. The student will be encouraged to undertake full life cycle analysis to include, for example, greenhouse gas emissions associated with the industrial production of nitrogenous fertilizer. They may also conduct targeted experiments in the laboratory, in particular to assess nitrous oxide emissions from systems based on biological nitrogen fixers as opposed to nitrate fertilizer additions. The student will be part of the Earth and Life Systems Alliance, and will split their time between JIC and UEA. Funding Notes Funding may be available for UK/EU students. If funding is awarded for this project it will cover tuition fees and stipend for UK students. EU students may be eligible for full funding, or tuition fees only, depending on the funding source. International students will not be eligible for this funding however they are still welcome to apply for this project but would have to find alternative funding. L. T. Evans (1998) ‘Feeding the Ten Billion: Plants and Population Growth’ Cambridge University Press D. Tilman et al. (2002) ‘Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices’ Nature 418: 671-677 D. Tilman et al. (2001) ‘Forecasting agriculturally driven global environmental change’ Science 292: 281-284 D. S. Jenkinson (2001) ‘The impact of humans on the nitrogen cycle, with focus on temperature arable agriculture’ Plant and Soil 228: 3-15 D. Cordell et al. (2009) ‘The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought’ Global Environmental Change 19(2): 292-305 |
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