MINERAL NITROGEN FERTILIZERS: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF PRODUCTION AND USE - Fertilizers: Components, Uses in Agriculture and Environmental Impacts - page 4

nitrogen application on soil microbial activities, responsible for the production of
atmospheric pollutants (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen compounds) and nitrogen
dispersion in water bodies, will be presented. Mitigation strategies for both sub-systems
suitable for reducing the environmental impact in the use of nitrogen fertilizers will be
also reported.
Keywords : Mineral nitrogen fertilizers, urea, ammonium nitrate, calcium ammonium nitrate,
LCA, environmental impact
I NTRODUCTION
The agro-ecosystem is an ecosystem which has been modified by man to produce food,
raw material and energy. Several forms of management have been developed in the course of
time and in different regions of the planet. They caused different modifications in the original
ecosystem metabolism (flux of energy and cycle of matter). One of the main consequences of
these modifications is the environmental pollution, at local and global scale. These may be
particularly intense for the so-called industrialized agro-ecosystem. The industrialized agro-
ecosystem is formed by technological and environmental subsystems, interacting strictly
among one another to guarantee high quantitative and qualitative productivity requested by
the market. Efficient management, at the moment, requires a widespread use of fossil fuels
that often severely affect the environment (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Environmental burdens of the agro-ecosystem due to the interaction between technological
system and environmental system.