Role of Carbon Substrates Added in the Transformation of Surplus Nitrate to Organic Nitrogen in a Calcareous Soil

Excessive amounts of nitrate have accumulated in many soils on the North China Plain due to the large amounts of chemical N fertilizers or manures used in combination with low carbon inputs. We investigated the potential of different carbon substrates added to transform soil nitrate into soil organic N （SON）. A 56-d laboratory incubation experiment using the 15N tracer （K15NO3） technique was carried out to elucidate the proportion of SON derived from accumulated soil nitrate following amendment with glucose or maize straw at controlled soil temperature and moisture. The dynamics and isotopic abundance of mineral N （NO3 and NH4＋） and SON and greenhouse gas （N20 and CO2） emissions during the incubation were investigated. Although carbon amendments markedly stimulated transformation of nitrate to newly formed SON, this was only a substitution effect of the newly formed SON with native SON because SON at the end of the incubation period was not significantly different （P 〉 0.05） from that in control soil without added C. At the end of the incubation period, amendment with glucose, a readily available C source, increased nitrate immobilization by 2.65 times and total N20-N emission by 33.7 times, as compared with maize straw amendment. Moreover, the differences in SON and total N20-N emission between the treatments with glucose and maize straw were significant （P 〈 0.05）. However, the total N20-N emission in the straw treatment was not significantly （P ~ 0.05） greater than that in the control. Straw amendment may be a potential option in agricultural practice for transformation of nitrate N to SON and minimization of N20 emitted as well as restriction of NO3-N leaching.

Plant traits related to leaf decomposition processes in arid ecosystems of northern Patagonia

Aims Plants play an important role in ecosystem processes.Functional meaning of trait variation in wide environmental gradients is well known but is scarcely known across narrow gradients.We analyze the variation of morphological,physical and chemical traits of dom-inant plant species and the potential rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobilization during senesced leaf decomposition of these species across a narrow aridity gradient,and to identify indicative traits useful to set species functional groups sharing decomposition patterns.Methods We analyzed the variation of morphological,physical and chemical traits(specific leaf area,seed mass,N and soluble phenols in green and senesced leaves,plant height)in dominant plant species at 12 sites across an aridity gradient in northern Patagonia,Argentina.We collected senesced leaves of each plant species at each site and used them to estimate the poten-tial rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobilization from decomposing senesced leaves in a microcosm experiment.We analyzed the variation of plant traits and decomposition rates across the aridity gradient.We grouped plants species accord-ing to growth forms(perennial grasses,deciduous shrubs,ever-green shrubs)and different combinations of morpho-physical and chemical traits of green and senesced leaves and compared the potential rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobiliza-tion during leaf decomposition among these groups delimited by each grouping criteria.Important Findings Plant traits did not vary across the aridity gradient.The potential rate of dry mass loss was positively related to aridity,while the potential rate of N release/immobilization did not vary across the gradient.Grouping species by separately morpho-physical and chemical traits resulted in a large overlapping in mean values of decomposition rates among groups.In contrast,plant groupings based on growth forms and those including all morpho-physical and chemical traits of green or senesced leaves yielded groups with differentiated rates of decomposition processes.The two latter groupings clustered spe-cies from more than one growth form indicating some overlapping in the rates of decomposition processes among species of different growth forms.Among traits,N concentration in senesced leaves and plant height explained the highest variation in decomposition rates being positively related to potential rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobilization.We concluded that plant groupings based on morpho-physical and chemical traits of either green or senesced leaves may be more powerful to differentiate functional species groups sharing decomposition patterns than the growth form group-ing.Moreover,plant height and N concentration in senesced leaves may be considered relevant synthetic functional traits in relation to decomposition processes in narrow aridity gradients.