Biochar is a carbon (C) rich product of thermochemical conversion of organic material that is used as a soil amendment due to its resistance to decomposition and its influence on nutrient dynamics; ...however, individual studies on biochar effects on phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) have proven inconsistent. Herein, we performed a meta-analysis of 124 published studies to evaluate the influence of biochar on available P, microbial biomass P (MBP), and inorganic N (NO3−-N and NH4+-N) in global agricultural ecosystems. Overall, the results showed that biochar applications significantly increased surface soil available P by 45% and MBP by 48% across the full range of biochar characteristics, soil type, or experimental conditions. By contrast, biochar addition to soil reduced NO3−-N concentrations by 12% and NH4+-N by 11%, but in most cases biochar added in combination with organic fertilizer significantly increased soil NH4+-N compared to controls. Biochar C:N ratio and biochar source (feedstock) strongly influenced soil P availability response to biochar where inorganic N was most influenced by biochar C:N ratio and soil pH. Biochar made from manure or other low C:N ratio materials, generated at low temperatures, or applied at high rates were generally more effective at enhancing soil available P. It is important, however, to note that most negative results were observed in short-term (<6 months) where long-term studies (>12 months) tended to result in neutral to modest positive effects on both P and N. This meta-analysis indicates that biochar generally enhances soil P availability when added to soils alone or in combination with fertilizer. These findings provide a scientific basis for developing more rational strategies toward widespread adoption of biochar as a soil amendment for agricultural P and N management.
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•Biochar effects on agricultural soil P and N availability was examined in a meta-analysis.•Biochar additions increased soil available P regardless of analytic method.•Biochar reduced soil inorganic N in agricultural soils.•Biochar characteristics strongly influenced the response of soil available P.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Well-constrained carbon:nitrogen:phosphorus (C:N:P) ratios in planktonic biomass, and their importance in advancing our understanding of biological processes and nutrient cycling in marine ...ecosystems, has motivated ecologists to search for similar patterns in terrestrial ecosystems. Recent analyses indicate the existence of “Redfield-like” ratios in plants, and such data may provide insight into the nature of nutrient limitation in terrestrial ecosystems. We searched for analogous patterns in the soil and the soil microbial biomass by conducting a review of the literature. Although soil is characterized by high biological diversity, structural complexity and spatial heterogeneity, we found remarkably consistent C:N:P ratios in both total soil pools and the soil microbial biomass. Our analysis indicates that, similar to marine phytoplankton, element concentrations of individual phylogenetic groups within the soil microbial community may vary, but on average, atomic C:N:P ratios in both the soil (186:13:1) and the soil microbial biomass (60:7:1) are well-constrained at the global scale. We did see significant variation in soil and microbial element ratios between vegetation types (i.e., forest versus grassland), but in most cases, the similarities in soil and microbial element ratios among sites and across large scales were more apparent than the differences. Consistent microbial biomass element ratios, combined with data linking specific patterns of microbial element stoichiometry with direct evidence of microbial nutrient limitation, suggest that measuring the proportions of C, N and P in the microbial biomass may represent another useful tool for assessing nutrient limitation of ecosystem processes in terrestrial ecosystems.
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Nitrogen (N) availability is thought to frequently limit terrestrial ecosystem processes, and explicit consideration of N biogeochemistry, including biological N
2
fixation, is central to ...understanding ecosystem responses to environmental change. Yet, the importance of free-living N
2
fixation-a process that occurs on a wide variety of substrates, is nearly ubiquitous in terrestrial ecosystems, and may often represent the dominant pathway for acquiring newly available N-is often underappreciated. Here, we draw from studies that investigate free-living N
2
fixation from functional, physiological, genetic, and ecological perspectives. We show that recent research and analytical advances have generated a wealth of new information that provides novel insight into the ecology of N
2
fixation as well as raises new questions and priorities for future work. These priorities include a need to better integrate free-living N
2
fixation into conceptual and analytical evaluations of the N cycle's role in a variety of global change scenarios.
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New techniques have identified a wide range of organisms with the capacity to carry out biological nitrogen fixation (BNF)—greatly expanding our appreciation of the diversity and ubiquity of N ...fixers—but our understanding of the rates and controls of BNF at ecosystem and global scales has not advanced at the same pace. Nevertheless, determining rates and controls of BNF is crucial to placing anthropogenic changes to the N cycle in context, and to understanding, predicting and managing many aspects of global environmental change. Here, we estimate terrestrial BNF for a pre-industrial world by combining information on N fluxes with 15N relative abundance data for terrestrial ecosystems. Our estimate is that pre-industrial N fixation was 58 (range of 40–100) Tg N fixed yr−1; adding conservative assumptions for geological N reduces our best estimate to 44 Tg N yr−1. This approach yields substantially lower estimates than most recent calculations; it suggests that the magnitude of human alternation of the N cycle is substantially larger than has been assumed.
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The chemical complexity of decomposing plant litter is a central feature shaping the terrestrial carbon (C) cycle, but explanations of the origin of this complexity remain contentious. Here, we ask: ...How does litter chemistry change during decomposition, and what roles do decomposers play in these changes? During a long‐term (730 days) litter decomposition experiment, we tracked concurrent changes in decomposer community structure and function and litter chemistry using high‐resolution molecular techniques. Contrary to the current paradigm, we found that the chemistry of different litter types diverged, rather than converged, during decomposition due to the activities of decomposers. Furthermore, the same litter type exposed to different decomposer communities exhibited striking differences in chemistry, even after > 90% mass loss. Our results show that during decomposition, decomposer community characteristics regulate changes in litter chemistry, which could influence the functionality of litter‐derived soil organic matter (SOM) and the turnover and stabilisation of soil C.
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6.
Global patterns in belowground communities Fierer, Noah; Strickland, Michael S; Liptzin, Daniel ...
Ecology letters,
November 2009, Volume:
12, Issue:
11
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Although belowground ecosystems have been studied extensively and soil biota play integral roles in biogeochemical processes, surprisingly we have a limited understanding of global patterns in ...belowground biomass and community structure. To address this critical gap, we conducted a meta-analysis of published data (> 1300 datapoints) to compare belowground plant, microbial and faunal biomass across seven of the major biomes on Earth. We also assembled data to assess biome-level patterns in belowground microbial community composition. Our analysis suggests that variation in microbial biomass is predictable across biomes, with microbial biomass carbon representing 0.6-1.1% of soil organic carbon (r² = 0.91) and 1-20% of total plant biomass carbon (r² = 0.42). Approximately 50% of total animal biomass can be found belowground and soil faunal biomass represents < 4% of microbial biomass across all biomes. The structure of belowground microbial communities is also predictable: bacterial community composition and fungal : bacterial gene ratios can be predicted reasonably well from soil pH and soil C : N ratios respectively. Together these results identify robust patterns in the structure of belowground microbial and faunal communities at broad scales which may be explained by universal mechanisms that regulate belowground biota across biomes.
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The ecological mechanisms driving community succession are widely debated, particularly for microorganisms. While successional soil microbial communities are known to undergo predictable changes in ...structure concomitant with shifts in a variety of edaphic properties, the causal mechanisms underlying these patterns are poorly understood. Thus, to specifically isolate how nutrients--important drivers of plant succession--affect soil microbial succession, we established a full factorial nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) fertilization plot experiment in recently deglaciated (∼3 years since exposure), unvegetated soils of the Puca Glacier forefield in Southeastern Peru. We evaluated soil properties and examined bacterial community composition in plots before and one year after fertilization. Fertilized soils were then compared to samples from three reference successional transects representing advancing stages of soil development ranging from 5 years to 85 years since exposure. We found that a single application of +NP fertilizer caused the soil bacterial community structure of the three-year old soils to most resemble the 85-year old soils after one year. Despite differences in a variety of soil edaphic properties between fertilizer plots and late successional soils, bacterial community composition of +NP plots converged with late successional communities. Thus, our work suggests a mechanism for microbial succession whereby changes in resource availability drive shifts in community composition, supporting a role for nutrient colimitation in primary succession. These results suggest that nutrients alone, independent of other edaphic factors that change with succession, act as an important control over soil microbial community development, greatly accelerating the rate of succession.
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Nutrient resorption is a fundamental process through which plants withdraw nutrients from leaves before abscission. Nutrient resorption patterns have the potential to reflect gradients in plant ...nutrient limitation and to affect a suite of terrestrial ecosystem functions.
Here, we used a stoichiometric approach to assess patterns in foliar resorption at a variety of scales, specifically exploring how N : P resorption ratios relate to presumed variation in N and/or P limitation and possible relationships between N : P resorption ratios and soil nutrient availability.
N : P resorption ratios varied significantly at the global scale, increasing with latitude and decreasing with mean annual temperature and precipitation. In general, tropical sites (absolute latitudes < 23°26′) had N : P resorption ratios of < 1, and plants growing on highly weathered tropical soils maintained the lowest N : P resorption ratios. Resorption ratios also varied with forest age along an Amazonian forest regeneration chronosequence and among species in a diverse Costa Rican rain forest.
These results suggest that variations in N : P resorption stoichiometry offer insight into nutrient cycling and limitation at a variety of spatial scales, complementing other metrics of plant nutrient biogeochemistry. The extent to which the stoichiometric flexibility of resorption will help regulate terrestrial responses to global change merits further investigation.
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Tropical forests dominate global terrestrial carbon (C) exchange, and recent droughts in the Amazon Basin have contributed to short‐term declines in terrestrial carbon dioxide uptake and storage. ...However, the effects of longer‐term climate variability on tropical forest carbon dynamics are still not well understood. We synthesised field data from more than 150 tropical forest sites to explore how climate regulates tropical forest aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and organic matter decomposition, and combined those data with two existing databases to explore climate – C relationships globally. While previous analyses have focused on the effects of either temperature or rainfall on ANPP, our results highlight the importance of interactions between temperature and rainfall on the C cycle. In cool forests (< 20 °C), high rainfall slowed rates of C cycling, but in warm tropical forests (> 20 °C) it consistently enhanced both ANPP and decomposition. At the global scale, our analysis showed an increase in ANPP with rainfall in relatively warm sites, inconsistent with declines in ANPP with rainfall reported previously. Overall, our results alter our understanding of climate – C cycle relationships, with high precipitation accelerating rates of C exchange with the atmosphere in the most productive biome on earth.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) availability regulate plant productivity throughout the terrestrial biosphere, influencing the patterns and magnitude of net primary production (NPP) by land plants ...both now and into the future. These nutrients enter ecosystems via geologic and atmospheric pathways and are recycled to varying degrees through the plant–soil–microbe system via organic matter decay processes. However, the proportion of global NPP that can be attributed to new nutrient inputs versus recycled nutrients is unresolved, as are the large-scale patterns of variation across terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we combined satellite imagery, biogeochemical modeling, and empirical observations to identify previously unrecognized patterns of new versus recycled nutrient (N and P) productivity on land. Our analysis points to tropical forests as a hotspot of new NPP fueled by new N (accounting for 45% of total new NPP globally), much higher than previous estimates from temperate and high-latitude regions. The large fraction of tropical forest NPP resulting from new N is driven by the high capacity for N fixation, although this varies considerably within this diverse biome; N deposition explains a much smaller proportion of new NPP. By contrast, the contribution of new N to primary productivity is lower outside the tropics, and worldwide, new P inputs are uniformly low relative to plant demands. These results imply that new N inputs have the greatest capacity to fuel additional NPP by terrestrial plants, whereas low P availability may ultimately constrain NPP across much of the terrestrial biosphere.
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