Global nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer use for agriculture production in the past half century: shifted hot spots and nutrient imbalance

Abstract. In addition to enhancing agricultural productivity, synthetic nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) fertilizer application in croplands dramatically alters global nutrient budget, water quality, greenhouse gas balance, and their feedback to the climate system. However, due to the lack of geospatial fertilizer input data, current Earth system and land surface modeling studies have to ignore or use oversimplified data (e.g., static, spatially uniform fertilizer use) to characterize agricultural N and P input over decadal or century-long periods. In this study, we therefore develop global time series gridded data of annual synthetic N and P fertilizer use rate in agricultural lands, matched with HYDE 3.2…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• IS
  Iowa State University
• CA
  Chinese Academy of Sciences
• SK
  State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology