Issues in the Field of Engineering - Essay Example

The National Academy of Engineering has recognized 14 grand challenges to the field of engineering in the 21st century. Managing nitrogen cycle is one of those 14 challenges that require immediate intervention (University of Iowa). Although the academic literature and previous studies have paid less attention to this issue compared to other challenges like global warming or climate change, it is really a sensitive problem that can have terrible impacts on ecosystems and public health. The human-induced disruptions of the global nitrogen cycle result in serious engineering challenges.

The nitrogen cycle plays a central role in the production of food, and hence it reflects a crucial aspect of energy needs. The National Academy of Engineering describes in their web article “Manage the nitrogen cycle” that Nitrogen cycle is considered as a process where the chemistry of Earth and life meets together as plants extract nitrogen from their surrounding environment to make food. Regulating the impacts of agriculture on the global nitrogen cycle turns out to be a growing challenge to the concept of sustainable development.

According to the article “Manage the nitrogen cycle,” amino acids (building blocks of proteins) and nucleotides (building blocks of DNA) contain nitrogen as a major component, and hence all living things need this element. Nitrogen is supplied in inexhaustible amounts in our planet – nitrogen makes up nearly four-fifths of the earth’s atmosphere and is present in the form of nitrogen molecules (National Academy of Engineering). However, the atmospheric nitrogen is not readily available for living organisms because nitrogen molecules rarely enter into chemical reactions.

Dincer and Zamfirescu point out in their book that the large scale energy released from lightning strikes or the chemical abilities of some microbes