Soil net nitrogen mineralisation across global grasslands.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31672992.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-12948-2 and PMC identifier 6823350.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Soil nitrogen mineralisation (N<sub>min</sub>), the conversion of organic into inorganic N, is important for productivity and nutrient cycling. The balance between mineralisation and immobilisation (net N<sub>min</sub>) varies with soil properties and climate. However, because most global-scale assessments of net N<sub>min</sub> are laboratory-based, its regulation under field-conditions and implications for real-world soil functioning remain uncertain. Here, we explore the drivers of realised (field) and potential (laboratory) soil net N<sub>min</sub> across 30 grasslands worldwide. We find that realised N<sub>min</sub> is largely explained by temperature of the wettest quarter, microbial biomass, clay content and bulk density. Potential N<sub>min</sub> only weakly correlates with realised N<sub>min</sub>, but contributes to explain realised net N<sub>min</sub> when combined with soil and climatic variables. We provide novel insights of global realised soil net N<sub>min</sub> and show that potential soil net N<sub>min</sub> data available in the literature could be parameterised with soil and climate data to better predict realised N<sub>min</sub>.