首页|Different fates and retention of deposited NH4+ and NO3? in an alpine grassland in northwest China: A 15N tracer study

Different fates and retention of deposited NH4+ and NO3? in an alpine grassland in northwest China: A 15N tracer study

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? 2022 Elsevier B.V.The fates and redistribution of deposited nitrogen (N) determine the influence on N cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the different fates between deposited nitrate nitrogen (NO3?) and ammonium nitrogen (NH4+) as well as the amount of deposited N retained in ecosystems are still not fully understood. We conducted a field experiment to investigate the fates of deposited NO3? and NH4+ by application of stable 15N isotopes over a period of 455 days in an alpine grassland ecosystem and determined the preference of NO3? and NH4+ for different types of plants. Our research showed that at 15 and 455 days after tracer labeling, the total 15N recovery of NO3? and NH4+ declined from 48.48% to 21.99% and 49.31–7.87%, respectively, indicating that the long-term NH4+-N retention capacity of alpine grassland was lower than NO3?-N. This condition indicated that the changes in deposited N composition can affect the N cycling in ecosystems. Most of N in 15N-NO3? and 15N-NH4+ were immobilized in the litter layer from 22.08% to 9.02% and 36.70–4.53%, respectively, suggesting that the litter layer was the major N sink of NH4+and NO3?. In addition, 19.13% and 2.81% of added 15N-NO3? were recovered in plant, which was twice more than those of 15N-NH4+ (8.43% and 1.42%), indicating that the preference of plants in our study area was NO3?-N. Our results demonstrated the great difference of dynamics in the fate and redistribution of deposition N-NO3? and N-NH4+, about half of atmospherically deposited N-NO3? and N-NH4+ were lost in the initial period, and that mere portion retained within the ecosystem consistently decreased, especially for N-NH4+. Our results also show that the N retention capacity of alpine grassland is relatively weak, resulting in a positively but limited effectiveness in growth and carbon sequestration enhancement. These results can help to assess the ecological effects of N deposition.

15N tracerNitrogen depositionNitrogen redistributionNitrogen retentionTotal ecosystem recovery

Wan Q.、Liu Y.、Xie M.、Li L.、Yue Z.、Liu B.

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State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography Chinese Academy of Sciences

University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Soil Conservation and Environmental Protection College of Resources and Environment Linyi University

2022

Environmental and experimental botany

Environmental and experimental botany

SCI
ISSN:0098-8472
年,卷(期):2022.201
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