Global patterns and controlling factors of soil nitrification rate

Soil nitrification, an important pathway of nitrogen transformation in ecosystems, produces soil nitrate that influences net primary productivity, while the by‐product of nitrification, nitrous oxide, is a significant greenhouse gas. Although there have been many studies addressing the microbiology,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global change biology 2020-07, Vol.26 (7), p.4147-4157
Main Authors: Li, Zhaolei, Zeng, Zhaoqi, Tian, Dashuan, Wang, Jinsong, Fu, Zheng, Zhang, Fangyue, Zhang, Ruiyang, Chen, Weinan, Luo, Yiqi, Niu, Shuli
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ammonia
Ammonium
Ammonium compounds
Biogeochemistry
Biomass
Carbon
climate
Coefficients
Computer simulation
Ecosystems
Environmental changes
Environmental impact
Greenhouse effect
Greenhouse gases
microbial biomass
Microbiology
Microorganisms
Multivariate statistical analysis
Net Primary Productivity
Nitrification
Nitrogen
Nitrogen cycle
Nitrous oxide
Northern Hemisphere
pH effects
Primary production
Soil
Soil chemistry
soil nitrification rate
Soil pH
Soil temperature
Soils
Synthesis
Terrestrial ecosystems
Terrestrial environments
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Summary:Soil nitrification, an important pathway of nitrogen transformation in ecosystems, produces soil nitrate that influences net primary productivity, while the by‐product of nitrification, nitrous oxide, is a significant greenhouse gas. Although there have been many studies addressing the microbiology, physiology, and impacting environment factors of soil nitrification at local scales, there are very few studies on soil nitrification rate over large scales. We conducted a global synthesis on the patterns and controlling factors of soil nitrification rate normalized at 25°C by compiling 3,140 observations from 186 published articles across terrestrial ecosystems. Soil nitrification rate tended to decrease with increasing latitude, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, and varied largely with ecosystem types. The soil nitrification rate significantly increased with mean annual temperature (MAT), soil nitrogen content, microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen, soil ammonium, and soil pH, but decreased with soil carbon:nitrogen and carbon:nitrogen of microbial biomass. The total soil nitrogen content contributed the most to the variations of global soil nitrification rate (total coefficient = 0.29) in structural equation models. The microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN; total coefficient = 0.19) was nearly of equivalent importance relative to MAT (total coefficient = 0.25) and soil pH (total coefficient = 0.24) in determining soil nitrification rate, while soil nitrogen and pH influenced soil nitrification via changing soil MBN. Moreover, the emission of soil nitrous oxide was positively related to soil nitrification rate at a global scale. This synthesis will advance our current understanding on the mechanisms underlying large‐scale variations of soil nitrification and benefit the biogeochemical models in simulating global nitrogen cycling. This study revealed the global patterns and controlling factors of soil nitrification rate by compiling 3,140 observations from 186 published articles across terrestrial ecosystems. The total soil nitrogen content contributed the most to the variations of soil nitrification rate in structural equation models. The microbial biomass was nearly of equivalent importance relative to MAT and soil pH in determining soil nitrification rate, while soil nitrogen and pH influenced soil nitrification via changing soil microbial biomass nitrogen. The findings imply that incorporating soil nitrogen substrates and microbial biomass characteristics
ISSN:1354-1013
1365-2486
DOI:10.1111/gcb.15119