The World's Forgotten Greenhouse Gas

• This article discusses an overlooked greenhouse gas with great heat-trapping potential, nitrous oxide, and its emissions related to agriculture.
• Nitrous oxide is a byproduct of the nitrification process by soil microbes, which increases when using synthetic fertilizer on crops.
• The article describes a few farming practices that can reduce fertilizer application and thus reduce nitrous oxide emissions, including no-till farming, drip irrigation, and biofertilizer inoculation.

Positives

• This article addresses agriculture's role in climate change, which everyone can relate to because we rely on farmers for food.
• The article has a few helpful diagrams that break down the nitrification process in the nitrogen cycle.
• This article presents several evidence-based solutions to the problem it describes.

Additional Prerequisites

• Learners should be familiar with basic farming practices such as fertilizer application, tilling, irrigation, and pesticide application.
• Learners should have a basic understanding of the nitrogen cycle and the greenhouse effect.
• Some learners may need the terms anthropogenic, greenhouse gas, microbe, and others defined before reading the article.

Differentiation

• After reading the article, have students consider actions they might take to be mindful of and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions related to agriculture and food production.
• An extension activity could involve students researching sustainable agricultural practices and relating them to their greenhouse gas reduction potential, focusing on nitrous oxide emissions.
• This article would be an excellent resource for studying the nitrogen cycle or agricultural practices.
• To create an interdisciplinary experience, have students research the amount of fertilizer and pesticide used in agriculture in different regions of the United States and attempt to quantify the amount of money and greenhouse gases that can be saved if nitrogenous fertilizer use is reduced by 50%. Students can also brainstorm policy ideas to incentivize this reduction more for a civics connection.

This resource addresses the listed standards. To fully meet standards, search for more related resources.