Effects of external nitrogen additions on soil organic carbon dynamics and the mechanism

Abstract

What would be the impact of external nitrogen additions on soil carbon, an issue still under debating, as reported experimental results were either positive, negative or neutral. Several factors may be related to these seemingly controversial results: differences in ecosystem types and soil properties, soil carbon detection methods, soil depths, and contents of soil labile and recalcitrant carbon that affect the responses to nitrogen additions, all could cause discrepancies and variations in carbon sequestration. The several processes that contribute to enhance soil organic carbon storage include increasing litter input, decreasing soil carbon output, particularly, by supressed decomposition of recalcitrant carbon, promoting soil humification and formation of recalcitrant carbon storage. However, there are still many uncertainties associated with these issues. To improve our understanding, the research about carbon in deep soil layers, dissolved organic carbon leaching and accumulation, and the effect of labile and recalcitrant soil C ratios on N addition responses, should be further investigated in the future studies.