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Home → Publications → Forest Nursery Notes → 2007 Summer Forest Nursery Notes → 2007 Summer Forest Nursery Notes - New Nursery Literature → Impacts of Soil Amendment History on Nitrogen Availability from Manure and Fertilizer

Impacts of Soil Amendment History on Nitrogen Availability from Manure and Fertilizer

Mallory, E. B. and Griffin, T. S. Soil Science Society of America Journal 71(3):964-973. 2007.

Repeated, long-term additions of organic materials not only increase stocks of mineralizable soil N, but also bring about changes in soil characteristics that influence N dynamics. We conducted an aerobic incubation to explore how soil amendment history affects the transfor-mation and availability of recently added N. Soil was collected from plots under contrasting amended and nonamended soil management systems in a 13-yr cropping systems experiment. Nitrogen source treatments were: no added N (control), NH4+ fertilizer (Fert), a net mineralizing manure (MManure), and a net immobilizing manure (IManure). Soil NH4+ and NO3¯ concentrations were monitored for 282 d. A two-pool, fi rst-order model with fi xed rate parameters was fitted to the NO3¯ accumulation data. When no N was added, net mineralization in the historically amended soil was twice that in the historically non-amended soil, mostly due to differences in soil total N stocks. When N sources were added, NH4+ consumption, net N mineralization, and estimated N pools were affected by both soil amendment history and N source, with a significant interaction between the two factors. Historically amended soil reduced the availability of recently added N relative to the non-amended soil. This reduction occurred in the active pool (N1) for MManure and in the slow pool (N2) for Fert. It appeared to be related to the timing of C availability. Future work modeling N availability should consider soil amendment history not only for its effects on soil N supply capacity, but also for its effects on the availability of recently added N sources.


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Author(s): E. B. Mallory, T. S. Griffin

Section: Fertilization and Nutrition

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