Sustainability leadership efforts at the University of New Hampshire have contributed to a groundbreaking initiative to measure and reduce the nitrogen footprint left behind by campus activities like food waste and energy consumption. The new research is highlighted in the April 2017 special issue of Sustainability: The Journal of Record. The publication outlines research being done at UNH, and seven other institutions, to reduce emissions of reactive nitrogen (all forms of nitrogen except unreactive N2 gas) and prevent negative impacts on such things as water quality, air pollution, and climate change.
Sustainability leadership efforts at the University of New Hampshire have contributed to a groundbreaking initiative to measure and reduce the nitrogen footprint left behind by campus activities like food waste and energy consumption. The new research is highlighted in the April 2017 special issue of Sustainability: The Journal of Record. The publication outlines research being done at UNH, and seven other institutions, to reduce emissions of reactive nitrogen (all forms of nitrogen except unreactive N2 gas) and prevent negative impacts on such things as water quality, air pollution, and climate change.
“Our goal is to make the nitrogen footprint a sustainability metric that all institutions across the world can track and manage,” said Allison Leach, a doctoral candidate in natural resources and Earth systems science at UNH, a research associate at UNH’s Sustainability Institute, and lead author of one of the featured studies in the journal. “A nitrogen footprint connects our everyday choices, such as food, utilities, and transit, to nitrogen pollution in the environment. Reducing our nitrogen footprint is vital because it can negatively impact not only the environment but also human health, from effects like smog and acid rain to global climate change.”
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