Disruption of a Planetary Nitrogen Cycle as Evidence of Extraterrestrial Agriculture

TL;DR

This paper explores how the atmospheric presence of nitrogen-based gases like NH₃ and N₂O, resulting from agriculture, could serve as detectable signs of extraterrestrial technology and farming activities on other planets.

Contribution

It introduces a method to assess the spectral detectability of agricultural nitrogen gases as potential technosignatures on exoplanets.

Findings

Current Earth levels of NH₃ and N₂O are hard to detect remotely.

Large-scale hypothetical agriculture could produce detectable spectral changes.

Detection of these gases alongside other atmospheric components could indicate extraterrestrial agriculture.

Abstract

Agriculture is one of the oldest forms of technology on Earth. The cultivation of plants requires a terrestrial planet with active hydrological and carbon cycles and depends on the availability of nitrogen in soil. The technological innovation of agriculture is the active management of this nitrogen cycle by applying fertilizer to soil, at first through the production of manure excesses but later by the Haber-Bosch industrial process. The use of such fertilizers has increased the atmospheric abundance of nitrogen-containing species such as NH$_3$ and N$_2$O as agricultural productivity intensifies in many parts of the world. Both NH$_3$ and N$_2$O are effective greenhouse gases, and the combined presence of these gases in the atmosphere of a habitable planet could serve as a remotely detectable spectral signature of technology. Here we use a synthetic spectral generator to assess the detectability of NH$_3$ and N$_2$O that would arise from present-day and future global-scale agriculture. We show that present-day Earth abundances of NH$_3$ and N$_2$O would be difficult to detect but hypothetical scenarios involving a planet with 30-100 billion people could show a change in transmittance of about 50-70% compared to pre-agricultural Earth. These calculations suggest the possibility of considering the simultaneous detection of NH$_3$ and N$_2$O in an atmosphere that also contains H$_2$O, O$_2$, and CO$_2$ as a technosignature for extraterrestrial agriculture. The technology of agriculture is one that could be sustainable across geologic timescales, so the spectral signature of such an "ExoFarm" is worth considering in the search for technosignatures.