EarthN: A new Earth System Nitrogen Model

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: http://doi.org/10.1029/2017GC007392. This is version 1 of this Preprint.

Add a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.


Comments

There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.

Downloads

Download Preprint

Supplementary Files
Authors

Benjamin William Johnson, Colin Goldblatt

Abstract

The amount of nitrogen in the atmosphere, oceans, crust, and mantle have important ramifications for Earth’s biologic and geologic history. Despite this importance, the history and cycling of nitrogen in the Earth system is poorly constrained over time. For example, various models and proxies contrastingly support atmospheric mass stasis, net outgassing, or net ingassing over time. In addition, the amount available to and processing of nitrogen by organisms is intricately linked with and provides feedbacks on oxygen and nutrient cycles. To investigate the Earth system nitrogen cycle over geologic history, we have constructed a new nitrogen cycle model: EarthN. This model is driven by mantle cooling, links biologic nitrogen cycling to phosphate and oxygen, and incorporates geologic and biologic fluxes.
Model output is consistent with large (2-4x) changes in atmospheric mass over time, typically indicating atmospheric drawdown and nitrogen sequestration into the mantle and
continental crust. Critical controls on nitrogen distribution include mantle cooling history, weathering, and the total Bulk Silicate Earth+atmosphere nitrogen budget. Linking the nitrogen cycle to phosphorous and oxygen levels, instead of carbon as has been previously
done, provides new and more dynamic insight into the history of nitrogen on the planet.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/osf.io/94nvd

Subjects

Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Keywords

Dates

Published: 2018-05-03 11:31

License

GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) 2.1