Abstract
For a 19th-century world shrinking with each new shipping route, bringing in extra nitrogen not just from the manure heap down the road, but also from stocks thousands of miles away was now possible. Nutrient-rich waters and abundant fish stocks off the coast of Peru1 had supported generation after generation of seabirds. The by-product of this long-standing fishy feast was huge accumulations of nitrogen-loaded bird manure, called guano. In the low-rainfall conditions of the region it built up year on year, and by the latter half of the century these mounds of off-white gold had become a vital prop to global food production2,3.
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© 2015 Dave Reay
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Reay, D. (2015). Nitrogen and the Anthropocene. In: Nitrogen and Climate Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137286963_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137286963_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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