Running head: NITROGEN CYCLE
Organism’s Role in the Nitrogen Cycle
October 7, 2015
CJ McDonald
Table of Contents
Body of the paper………………………………………………………………………pg. 3-4
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………pg. 5
Organism’s Role in the Nitrogen Cycle
The nitrogen cycle is a series of events in which nitrogen is changed between different chemical forms. Nitrogen is very important to everything on Earth. The atmosphere is made up of almost 80% nitrogen. The only drawback about this is, is that plants and animals can not use the nitrogen when it is that form. The nitrogen has to be changed into a form that plants and animals can use. The process of nitrogen fixation makes this change to the nitrogen. Nitrogen fixation is a process in which nitrogen in the atmosphere is converted into ammonium or nitrogen dioxide (Wikipedia, n.d.). There are three different types of nitrogen fixation; atmospheric, biological, and industrial fixation. A natural occurrence of nitrogen fixation is in lightning. Once the nitrogen is converted into different forms like ammonium, plants and animals can begin to use it.…show more content… Bacteria is the main worker in this process. The bacteria puts the nitrogen into a form that the plants can absorb and use. Plants can also get nitrates from the decay of plants and animals. Most of the ammonia produced by decay is converted into nitrates (rcn.com, September 27, 2013). It is very important for the ammonia to be converted into nitrates because ammonia gas is toxic to plants (Wikipedia, n.d.). When nitrogen is in this form, it can easily work its way down into groundwater. High nitrogen levels can cause many different effects. High nitrogen in the drinking water can cause high oxygen levels in the blood of humans. It can also cause things like eutrophication in large bodies of