Phosphorus cycle in crisis!
Unit 4: Environmental Management Systems September 18th, 2009
There have been some articles in the media recently about an impending phosphoros crisis - Scientific American included the Phosphoros Famine in it’s most recent edition. Phosphoros is an element that cannot be produced or synthesized in laboratories, and some researchers believe that global supplies of rock phosphate will peak in 2033 and run out by the end of the century (”Soil Quality in Crisis” page 25 Weekly Times, 16 September, 2009). Without phosphates plants cannot grow, leading to fears that farmers will have trouble feeding a world population of about 11 billion by 2050. Australia is especially vunerable as it’s ancient soils are already depleted of phosphoros – native plants have evolved to survive in low phosphoros soils, but food crops cannot.
