Global analysis of agricultural soil denitrification in response to fertilizer nitrogen

Abstract

Terrestrial soil denitrification is of great importance for closing the nitrogen (N) cycle, yet the current understanding of soil denitrification response to N fertilization remains uncertain. While there has been a focus on factors controlling N2O fluxes from agricultural soils because of its global warming effect, much less is known about factors controlling total denitrification losses, yet these can be sufficiently large to affect N use efficiency. Here, we collated 353 observations from 74 papers and conducted a global-scale meta-analysis to explore the effects of N fertilization on agricultural soil denitrification (N2O+N2) where the acetylene inhibition technique was used. Relative to the control, N fertilization significantly increased soil denitrification by an average of 174%, although the magnitude of this increase differed significantly across environmental and soil conditions. Soil denitrification was more responsive to N fertilization in grasslands than in croplands. The changes in soil denitrification increased exponentially when the rates of synthetic N fertilizer application≤250kgNha−1, but above this threshold, there were no further increases. The responses of soil denitrification to N fertilization were negatively correlated with soil clay content, C:N ratio, and bulk density. The comparable responses of soil N2O emissions (165%) and denitrification to N fertilization resulted in a small insignificant decrease of the N2O:N2 ratio. Organic fertilizer applied with and without synthetic N fertilizer can contribute to lower N2O emissions probably by facilitating the last step of soil denitrification to N2 production. Taken together, we conclude that these findings can provide important insights on regulating soil denitrification, which might contribute to improvement of N use efficiency and elimination of its negative impacts in agro-ecosystems.