Dynamics of Carbon and Nitrogen in Agricultural Soils: Role of Organic and Inorganic Sources

The potential bias of nitrogen deposition effects on primary productivity and biodiversity

“…Atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition has significantly increased since pre‐industrial times (Kanakidou et al, 2016; Liu et al, 2013; Yu et al, 2019), and is expected to increase continuously in the coming decades (Liu et al, 2013; Sutton & Bleeker, 2013). The increased N supply often increases plant community productivity by increasing available nutrients (Hautier et al, 2015; Majumder et al, 2018; Seabloom et al, 2021) but decreases plant biodiversity by increasing light (Eskelinen et al, 2022; Hautier et al, 2009) and nutrients (Band et al, 2022; Dickson & Foster, 2011; Harpole et al, 2016) competition, ion toxicity (Tian et al, 2016), or litter (which reduces seeds germination and seedling growth) (Fang et al, 2012; Seabloom et al, 2021) in terrestrial ecosystems. These changes induced by increased N supply are likely to affect many aspects of ecosystems and the supply of ecosystem services to human society, because plant productivity is the primary source of energy in most ecosystems and species diversity underpins many important ecosystem functions and the stability (Isbell et al, 2017; Jia et al, 2022; Tilman et al, 2006; Zhang et al, 2016, 2019).…”

“…They compared the effects of IN versus ON on plant community biomass and diversity when they changed ammonium nitrate fertilizer to urea, which showed there were no detectable differences between IN and ON with 1‐year data. However, there were lots of studies in croplands, which showed significantly different impacts of IN and ON on crop yield and many ecological processes (Majumder et al, 2018; Mohr & Schopfer, 1995). In addition, a global meta‐analysis with 115 experiments in natural ecosystems showed that species abundance responded differently to IN or ON additions (Midolo et al, 2019).…”

“…The mechanisms underlying the effects of IN and ON additions on plant community productivity are relatively clear as there were many studies in croplands that showed diverse using efficiency of IN and ON (Majumder et al, 2018; Mohr & Schopfer, 1995). The effects of IN are higher than ON because IN can be absorbed directly by plants (Kuypers et al, 2018).…”

“…The first three mechanisms are highly related to the effects on plant community productivity. If IN and ON exhibit different effects on productivity, it would induce changes in competition for nutrients (Majumder et al, 2018) and light (Eskelinen et al, 2022; Hautier et al, 2009), and the accumulation of litter (Bobbink et al, 2010; Seabloom et al, 2021). Studies in forests show that soil pH decline with IN addition was higher than that with ON (Guo et al, 2011; Guo et al, 2017), suggesting that IN should induce more species loss due to more severe soil acidification (Tian et al, 2016).…”

Comprehensive relationships between kinetic energy and rainfall intensity based on precipitation measurements from an OTT Parsivel2 optical disdrometer

“…Soil is an essential element for sustaining life on Earth and largely determines the function of any ecological system. It influences the biogeochemical (Basu et al, 2021) and carbon dynamics (Majumder et al, 2018)-as well as climate change (Bonfante and Bouma, 2015)-by controlling the movement of minerals, energy, and water in the environment (Osman, 2014). The loss of millions of hectares of agriculture due to water-induced soil erosion is a global concern, with more than 36 billion tons of soil being eroded annually (Pimentel, 2006).…”