New soil carbon sequestration with nitrogen enrichment: a meta-analysis
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New soil carbon sequestration with nitrogen enrichment: a meta-analysis Xiaomin Huang & César Terrer & Feike A. Dijkstra & Bruce A. Hungate & Weijian Zhang & Kees Jan van Groenigen
Received: 13 January 2020 / Accepted: 22 June 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Background and aims Through agriculture and industry, humans are increasing the deposition and availability of nitrogen (N) in ecosystems worldwide. Carbon (C) isotope tracers provide useful insights into soil C dynamics, as they allow to study soil C pools of different ages. We evaluated to what extent N enrichment affects soil C dynamics in experiments that applied C isotope tracers. Methods Using meta-analysis, we synthesized data from 35 published papers. We made a distinction between “new C” and “old C” stocks, i.e., soil C derived from plant C input since the start of the isotopic enrichment, or unlabeled, pre-existing soil C. Results Averaged across studies, N addition increased new soil C stocks (+30.3%), total soil C stocks (+6.1%)
and soil C input proxies (+30.7%). Although N addition had no overall, average, effect on old soil C stocks and old soil C respiration, old soil C stocks increased with the amount of N added and respiration of old soil C declined. Nitrogen-induced effects on new soil C and soil C input both decreased with the amount of extraneous N added in control treatments. Conclusion Although our findings require additional confirmation from long-term field experiments, our analysis provides isotopic evidence that N addition stimulates soil C storage both by increasing soil C input and (at high N rates) by decreasing decomposition of old soil C. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the widely reported saturating response of plant growth to N enrichment also applies to new soil C storage.
Responsible Editor: Zucong Cai. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04617-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. X. Huang : W. Zhang Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China X. Huang : K. J. van Groenigen (*) Department of Geography, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4 RJ, UK e-mail: [email protected] X. Huang : W. Zhang College of Agriculture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China
C. Terrer Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA 94550, USA F. A. Dijkstra Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, the University of Sydney, Camden, NSW 2570, Australia B. A. Hungate Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA
Plant Soil
Keywords Isotopes . Nitrogen saturation . Nitrogen addition . Soil carbon dynamics . Soil carbon input
Introduction By burning fossil fuel and applying artificial fertilizer to cropland, humans have increased atmospheric
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