Quantifying the benefits of reducing synthetic nitrogen application policy on ecosystem carbon sequestration and biodiversity.

Synthetic Nitrogen (N) usage in agriculture has greatly increased food supply over the past century. However, the intensive use of N fertilizer is nevertheless the source of numerous environmental issues and remains a major challenge for policymakers to understand, measure, and quantify the interactions and trade-offs between ecosystem carbon and terrestrial biodiversity loss. In this study, we investigate the impacts of a public policy scenario that aims to halve N fertilizer application across European Union (EU) agriculture on both carbon (C) sequestration and biodiversity changes.