{"id":569135,"date":"2010-05-18T18:06:41","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T22:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenrightnow.com\/?p=11843"},"modified":"2010-05-18T18:06:41","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T22:06:41","slug":"kudzu-may-also-contribute-to-ozone-pollution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/569135","title":{"rendered":"Kudzu may also contribute to ozone pollution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>From Green Right Now Reports<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11846\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 212px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11846\" title=\"kudzu\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenrightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/kudzu.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: James H. Miller, USDA\" width=\"202\" height=\"147\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: James H. Miller, USDA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Here&#8217;s one more reason to bemoan the spread of kudzu throughout the southeastern United States: When the ubiquitous \u201cvine that ate the South\u201d isn\u2019t gobbling up landscapes and devastating ecosystems, it also is adding to ozone pollution, a new report says.<\/p>\n<p>In the May 17 online edition of the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/\" >Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a><\/em>, researcher John Hickman and colleagues (who worked together at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stonybrook.edu\/\" >Stony Brook University<\/a>) concluded that kudzu is able to fix atmospheric nitrogen at a high rate, potentially altering the nitrogen cycle. Hickman, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.earth.columbia.edu\/sections\/view\/9\" >Earth Institute at Columbia University<\/a>, compared nitrogen cycling and nitrogen oxide fluxes from both invaded and unaffected soils.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKudzu had the potential to add a lot of nitrogen to soils, so we expected to see some pretty big impacts on the soils of invaded ecosystems in the United States,\u201d he said. \u201cIt turns out that the changes you can\u2019t see in a kudzu invasion are just as dramatic as the ones you can.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Measurements in Georgia showed that some rates of nitrogen cycling were up to ten times faster in soils where kudzu had invaded. In addition to profound changes in rates of several components of nitrogen cycle, the researchers found that kudzu caused a doubling of emissions of nitric oxide from soils. Along with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitric oxide is the key precursor to ozone pollution in the lower atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAir pollution is a risk that hasn\u2019t been considered much in the conversation about invasive species, but it\u2019s something we may have to pay more attention to,\u201d Hickman said.<\/p>\n<p>Though it wasn\u2019t examined in the study, kudzu also emits isoprene, a VOC produced in large quantities by certain plant species, which is involved in reactions with NOx to form ozone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the case of kudzu, you have a plant that is generating NOx from the soil and emitting VOC\u2019s from its leaves\u2014it\u2019s like a living tailpipe,\u201d Hickman said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe they\u2019ll start calling kudzu \u2018the vine that choked the South.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Green Right Now Reports Photo: James H. Miller, USDA Here&#8217;s one more reason to bemoan the spread of kudzu throughout the southeastern United States: When the ubiquitous \u201cvine that ate the South\u201d isn\u2019t gobbling up landscapes and devastating ecosystems, it also is adding to ozone pollution, a new report says. In the May 17 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7031"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}