Winter cover crops offer a multitude of possible ecosystem services and benefits for crop production. Through the uptake of water and nutrients in autumn, cover crops reduce drainage (Meyer et al., 2019) and can reduce nitrate losses by leaching (Abdalla et al., 2019;Thapa et al., 2018). This process also transfers N taken up from deeper soil horizons to subsequent crops by mineralization over the growing period. Leguminous cover crops may add additional N from the atmosphere (De Notaris et al., 2020). By the input of organic material into the soil, cover cropping increases soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration (Abdalla et al., 2019;Poeplau & Don, 2015) and may mitigate the net global warming potential of an agricultural field (Abdalla et al., 2019). Through these gains in SOC and the activity of cover crop roots, the soil structure may be improved over time by increases in (macro)porosity and soil aggregation
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