323 During pasture grazing, freshly harvested herbage (litterfall) is dropped onto soils from the mouths of dairy cattle, potentially inducing nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends accounting for N2O emissions from arable crop residues in national inventories, emissions from the litterfall of grazed pasture systems are not recogn...

No-till cropping can increase soil C stocks and aggregation but patterns of long-term changes in N2O emissions, soil N availability, and crop yields still need to be resolved. We measured soil C accumulation, aggregation, soil water, N2O emissions, soil inorganic N, and crop yields in till and no-till corn-soybean-wheat rotations between 1989 and 2002 in southwestern Michigan and investigated w...

The ability of biogeochemical ecosystem models to represent agro-ecosystems depends on their correct integration with field observations. We report simultaneous calibration of 67 DayCent model parameters using multiple observation types through inverse modeling using the PEST parameter estimation software. Parameter estimation reduced the total sum of weighted squared residuals by 56% and impro...

Fertilization affects bacterial communities and element biogeochemical cycling in flooded paddy soils and the effect might differ among soil types. In this study, five paddy soils from Southern China were subjected to urea addition to explore impacts of fertilization on nitrogen oxide (N2O) emission and bacterial community composition under the flooding condition. 16S rRNA gene-based illumina s...

There is much interest in biogeochemical processes that occur at the interface between soils and streams since, at the scale of landscapes, these habitats may function as control points for fluxes of nitrogen (N) and other nutrients from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems. Here we examine whether a thermodynamic perspective can enhance our mechanistic and predictive understanding of the biogeoch...

Uptake (or negative flux) of nitrous oxide (N2O) in agricultural soils is a controversial issue which has proved difficult to investigate in the past due to constraints such as instrumental precision and methodological uncertainties. Using a recently developed high-precision quantum cascade laser gas analyser combined with a closed dynamic chamber, a well-defined detection limit of 4 μg N2O-N m...

Interest in biochar stems from its potential agronomic benefits and carbon sequestration ability. Biochar application alters soil nitrogen (N) dynamics. This review establishes emerging trends and gaps in biochar-N research. Biochar adsorption of NO3, up to 0.6 mg g biochar, occurs at pyrolysis temperatures >600 °C with amounts adsorbed dependent on feedstock and NO3 concentration. Biochar NH4 ...

pH has been recognized as one of the key environmental parameters with significant impacts on the nitrogen cycle in the environment. In this study, the effects of pH on NO3-/NO2- fate and N2O emission were examined with Shewanella loihica strain PV-4, an organism with complete denitrification and respiratory ammonification pathways. Strain PV-4 was incubated at varying pH with lactate as the el...

Fertilizer application in crop production agriculture has been identified as a major source of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Thus, management strategies that increase fertilizer N use efficiency will reduce N2O emission. Anhydrous ammonia applied to cropland in the fall is recognized as amanagement practice that increases the risk of N loss from the rooting zone, however, this practice is s...

Humid tropical forests are generally characterized by the lack of nitrogen (N) limitation to net primary productivity, yet paradoxically have high potential for N loss. We conducted an intensive field experiment with NH4 and NO3 additions to highly weathered tropical forest soils in Puerto Rico to determine the relative importance of N retention and loss mechanisms. Over one-half of all the NH4...