A greater diversity of crops in a given area may reduce the amount of dissolved nitrogen compounds from fertilizers leaking into surrounding water bodies, where they wreak havoc with acquatic ecosystems.
Whitney Broussard, currently at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Eugene Turner from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge examined the relationship between various agricultural practices and levels of dissolved nitrogen compounds. They looked at data for 56 watersheds across the continental United States at both the beginning and the end of the twentieth century.
The duo discovered that about 45% of the difference seen in the concentration of nitrogen compounds in the watersheds between 1997 and 2002 was due to variation in the biodiversity of crops on agricultural land in those areas.
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Ecology: Perils of monoculture. Nature 457, 938 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/457938c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/457938c
