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Conference Theme |
- Food Security
- Energy Security/Industry
- Human Health & Environmental Degradation
- Ecosystem Health and Biodiversity
- Climate Change
- Integration
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Global nitrogen cycle represents one of the most important nutrient cycles that sustain life on earth. Today, humans add 1.5 times more nitrogen than the natural terrestrial processes combined together through a combination of agriculture and fossil fuel use, and unduly influence the global nitrogen cycle.
The production of reactive nitrogen forms synthetically utilizing Noble Prize winning discovery of Haber-Bosch process in early twentieth century is associated with both growing economy in terms of food production and industry, and environmental degradation. The advancements in medical and health sciences allowed the increase in world population at a much faster rate during the last hundred years more than ever before in the history of existence of mankind on earth, however, the burgeoning human population depends upon food production made possible by synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. This distortion of the nitrogen cycle, while raising agricultural yields, causes degradation of water and air quality, biodiversity, ecosystem services and human health. On the other hand reactive nitrogen deficiencies on farmlands in many regions of the globe particularly in Africa and Asia continue to create economic and health hardships, and accelerate land degradation. The developments of policy to control unwanted reactive nitrogen release in the environment is difficult because much of the reactive N release is related to food and energy production and moreover reactive N species can be transported great distances in the atmosphere and aquatic systems. Although the nitrogen cycle provides a framework for assessing broad scale or even global strategies to improve nitrogen use efficiency, nitrogen cycling occurs at regional scale and policies can be evolved, implemented and enforced at the national or local levels. Multinational efforts to control N loss to the environment are surely needed, but these efforts will require commitments from individual countries and the policy makers within those countries as well as in multi-lateral forums represented by United Nations, its specialized agencies, IPCC and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as other global alliances.
As aforesaid the consequences are profound for the health of both ecosystems and humans. The challenge presented by changing nitrogen cycle remains under appreciated in both policy and scientific circles, but already observed impacts of such changes on biodiversity, climate and human health provide compelling reasons to exploit more fully options for nitrogen management and policies. The first pre-requisite to this is the assessment of nitrogen inputs and flows in different regions of the world and current state of understanding and developments surrounding nitrogen the most essential and fascinating element on earth.
The complex problems of reactive N management in a sustainable manner cannot be tackled individually, but rather the solutions must engage a large community that encompasses a broad spectrum of professionals. For N2010, the main theme is "Reactive Nitrogen Management for Sustainable Development: Science, Technology and Policy”. We are inviting not only participants concerned with particular aspects of N cycling, from all the disciplines of natural and applied sciences and engineering but also participants from the policy, development, and social communities. The N2010 meeting is the perfect venue to discuss these issues and consolidate the beneficial role of reactive nitrogen and to find common ground to answers and solutions to alleviate world hunger with minimal environmental harm. N2010 will endure in furtherance of agenda for better management of nitrogen across the globe started in the previous four International Nitrogen Conferences organised since 1998.
To achieve these goals, we will use a mixture of plenary lectures, invited lead and oral presentations, short workshops, and poster sessions. The plenary lectures will be used to inspire and challenge the meeting participants. Detailed scientific presentations will be given in a series of concurrent sessions. . Posters will be equally important in the N2010 conference and will be grouped by topic area and with plenty of time for interaction among the presenters. The technical sessions and workshops will be the prime focus of the meeting, with participants interacting across disciplinary lines to consider approaches for closing the loop on agriculture, development, biogeochemistry and nitrogen, and science and engineering challenges behind various issues. The technical sessions and workshops will be organised on following themes, however, these are not exclusive and we welcome any aspect related to broad theme of the conference
"Reactive Nitrogen Management for Sustainable Developmen - Science, Technology and Policy".
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- N in crop production systems in developed and developing countries
- N in livestock production systems in developed and developing countries
- N in integrated cropping-livestock production systems
- N fertilizer management and fertilizer N use efficiency
- Biological N fixation and its importance in food production
- Plant biology and biotechnology of N use efficiency
- Management of manures and agro-wastes
- Policy issues in fertilizer N management in too much and too little N use regions
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- Impacts of consumption of fossil fuels on the global-regional N cycle
- Impact of fertilizer production on the global-regional N cycle
- Influence of biofuel production on N cycle
- Policy imperatives for fuel consumption and clean energy technologies
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- Impacts of reactive N on human health
- Protein consumption challenges in under-nourished and over-nourished populations
- Implications of agro and urban wastes in N cycling
- Agricultural N management options in water and air pollution mitigation
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- Reactive N transport from land systems to aquatic systems and atmosphere
- Atmospheric transport and deposition
- Impacts of changes in global-regional N cycle on ecosystems and biodiversity
- Modelling the impacts of nitrogen on ecosystem health and biodiversity
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- Influence of Carbon-Nitrogen interactions on greenhouse gas balance
- GHG mitigation technologies in transport and energy production sector
- Influence of land management practices on GHG emissions
- Policy issues on Reactive N production and emissions
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- Improving the mechanistic understanding of N cycle processes
- Assessing N flows on multiple spatial scales
- New directions in modelling the N cascade
- Future scenarios of N flows and impacts
- Challenges of integrating nitrogen science and policies
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Suggestions for additional sessions are welcome. We also
welcome and invite proposals for organisation of Symposia, Side
Events, Scoping Meetings / Workshops etc. on related aspects.
Suggestions and proposals may please be sent to Conference
Coordinator by 30 April 2010. |
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