Abiotic factors regulating nitrification in a Swedish arable soil

Abstract

The effects of temperature, water potential and ammonium concentrations were studied in field and laboratory experiments on arable soil. The two field experiments used different sampling intervals, one at daily (short-term) and the other at monthly (long-term) intervals. In the short-term field experiment, the numbers and activities of nitrifiers were assessed before and after natural rain or irrigation. The nitrifiers were apparently outcompeted by heterotrophs during the first days after wetting the soil. Potential nitrification was affected only slightly by changes in water potential, whereas the numbers of ammonium and nitrite oxidizers appeared more sensitive to these changes. The numbers of ammonium and nitrite oxidizers correlated strongly during the daily samplings. The potential nitrite-oxidation rates correlated with water potentials whereas the potential ammonium oxidation rates did not. Extractable ammonium decreased in proportion to increasing nitrate concentrations in both the rain-fed and the irrigated plots. In the long-term field experiments, the numbers of ammonium oxidizers correlated with water potentials but not with in situ temperature or with ammonium concentrations. The potential ammonium-oxidation rates correlated with water potentials and with ammonium-oxidizer numbers. The potential nitrite-oxidation rates correlated strongly with the potential ammonium-oxidation rates. The field experiments implied that nitrite oxidizers obtained substrate from ammonium oxidizers but also from nitrate reduction. In laboratory experiments nitrate accumulated at a Q 10 of about 2 and the V max for nitrification was observed at a water potential of −0.11 MPa (65% of water-holding capacity). The K m for ammonium oxidation at pH 8.2 was 1.72 mg l−1 soil water.