In:
Biology and Fertility of Soils, Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Abstract:
Intensive fertilization of grasslands with cattle slurry can cause high environmental nitrogen (N) losses in form of ammonia (NH 3 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O), and nitrate (NO 3 − ) leaching. Still, knowledge on short-term fertilizer N partitioning between plants and dinitrogen (N 2 ) emissions is lacking. Therefore, we applied highly 15 N-enriched cattle slurry (97 kg N ha −1 ) to pre-alpine grassland field mesocosms. We traced the slurry 15 N in the plant-soil system and to denitrification losses (N 2 , N 2 O) over 29 days in high temporal resolution. Gaseous ammonia (NH 3 ), N 2 as well N 2 O losses at about 20 kg N ha −1 were observed only within the first 3 days after fertilization and were dominated by NH 3 . Nitrous oxide emissions (0.1 kg N ha −1 ) were negligible, while N 2 emissions accounted for 3 kg of fertilizer N ha −1 . The relatively low denitrification losses can be explained by the rapid plant uptake of fertilizer N, particularly from 0–4 cm depth, with plant N uptake exceeding denitrification N losses by an order of magnitude already after 3 days. After 17 days, total aboveground plant N uptake reached 100 kg N ha −1 , with 33% of N derived from the applied N fertilizer. Half of the fertilizer N was found in above and belowground biomass, while at about 25% was recovered in the soil and 25% was lost, mainly in form of gaseous emissions, with minor N leaching. Overall, this study shows that plant N uptake plays a dominant role in controlling denitrification losses at high N application rates in pre-alpine grassland soils.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0178-2762
,
1432-0789
DOI:
10.1007/s00374-024-01826-9
Language:
English
Publisher:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publication Date:
2024
detail.hit.zdb_id:
1473419-9
detail.hit.zdb_id:
742137-0
SSG:
12
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