https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep08280">
 

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Quantifying global patterns of terrestrial nitrogen (N) cycling is central to predicting future patterns of primary productivity, carbon sequestration, nutrient fluxes to aquatic systems, and climate forcing. With limited direct measures of soil N cycling at the global scale, syntheses of the 15N:14N ratio of soil organic matter across climate gradients provide key insights into understanding global patterns of N cycling. In synthesizing data from over 6000 soil samples, we show strong global relationships among soil N isotopes, mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual precipitation (MAP), and the concentrations of organic carbon and clay in soil. In both hot ecosystems and dry ecosystems, soil organic matter was more enriched in 15N than in corresponding cold ecosystems or wet ecosystems. Below a MAT of 9.8°C, soil δ15N was invariant with MAT. At the global scale, soil organic C concentrations also declined with increasing MAT and decreasing MAP. After standardizing for variation among mineral soils in soil C and clay concentrations, soil δ15N showed no consistent trends across global climate and latitudinal gradients. Our analyses could place new constraints on interpretations of patterns of ecosystem N cycling and global budgets of gaseous N loss.

Department

Earth Systems Research Center

Publication Date

2-6-2015

Journal Title

Scientific Reports

Publisher

Springer Nature

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep08280

Document Type

Article

Comments

This is an article published by Springer Nature in Scientific Reports in 2015, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep08280

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