Rainforest Live '97 Topic Essays from Queensland, Australia Faculty and Student Topic Essays

From the week ending April 18, 1997

The Nitrogen Cycle

Nitrogen gas is a very important part of our daily lives. Without it, we would not be able to manufacture the proteins which keep our bodies functioning in a healthy way. Considering that nitrogen is a gas found in the air around us, you would think that nitrogen enters our body through our lungs, right? Well, that is not the case at all. Instead, nitrogen gas found in the air must go through changes before it is usable to a human being. The changes it goes through are known as the nitrogen cycle.

A cycle is a continuous circle of events, with no beginning and no ending. It, therefore, is not correct to say that a nitrogen molecule begins in the air, but that is how we will begin our explanation. Nitrogen gas molecules float freely through the air, mingling with other gases and water vapor, until it falls to the ground as part of raindrops. In soil it is used by bacteria to make products they need for survival. These new products, containing nitrogen and other elements, are absorbed by plants. When an animal eats a plant, it also eats the nitrogen stored in the plant. And when a human eats the animal that has eaten the plant, the human also ingests the nitrogen. Nitrogen leaves a human body through the waste products we relieve ourselves of each day or leaves a plant when it dies and decays. Eventually, these waste products find their way to the soil, and then to bodies of water, where evaporation transports nitrogen molecules back to the air . . . where they will stay until the next rainfall when the cycle begins again.

Human intrusion like the removal of trees and plants to create more farmland can result in less nitrogen being cycled or in an overload of the cycle. For example, if too much nitrogen builds up in the water, the result is poor water quality and an excessive growth of algae. These changes in the water quality create an imbalance in the system. Because the nitrogen cycle is crucial to the survival of all living things any disruption of the cycle will have negative effects.

 

Ethnobotany and Intellectual Property Rights
Research Update
by Josh Farley, Faculty
Economist

The Aboriginal cultures of Queensland’s Wet Tropics have lived continuously in the area for thousands and thousands of years, during which time they have gained tremendous amounts of information regarding the properties of the forest plants they depended on for survival. There is a growing desire among remaining aborigines to preserve their knowledge for future generations and if possible profit from it, just as modern industries are turning their attention to ethnobotanical knowledge as a potential source of new medicines and industrial inputs. One of the major obstacles to gathering this knowledge is the legal uncertainty regarding intellectual property rights (the right to own one’s own ideas). Researchers will work with Aborigines to record their knowledge of food and medicinal plants in writing and survey traditional lands for such plants. Such research has several purposes. First, writing ethnobotanical knowledge down on paper gives prior claim in potential disputes over intellectual property rights. Second, once recorded, the knowledge is preserved for future generations. The research may also be turned into pamphlets on tribal culture and sold, and may help restore pride in traditional culture. Ideally, much of this knowledge may prove economically valuable. The more value intact forests are shown to have, the more incentive there is to save them.

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