SOIL NITROGEN CYCLING AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS IN THE SUBTROPICAL HILLY REGION OF CHINA: EVIDENCE FROM MEASUREMENTS AND MODELING

Highlights

● Soil nitrogen fluxes and influencing factors were reviewed in the subtropical hilly regions.

● Fertilizer application and atmospheric deposition contributed largely to soil nitrogen input.

● High gaseous, runoff and leaching losses of soil nitrogen were measured.

● Soil nitrogen cycles are well modelled with the Catchment Nutrients Management Model.

Abstract

The subtropical hilly region of China is a region with intensive crop and livestock production, which has resulted in serious N pollution in soil, water and air. This review summarizes the major soil N cycling processes and their influencing factors in rice paddies and uplands in the subtropical hilly region of China. The major N cycling processes include the N fertilizer application in croplands, atmospheric N deposition, biological N fixation, crop N uptake, ammonia volatilization, N₂O/NO emissions, nitrogen runoff and leaching losses. The catchment nutrients management model for N cycle modeling and its case studies in the subtropical hilly region were also introduced. Finally, N management practices for improving N use efficiency in cropland, as well as catchment scales are summarized.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

nitrogen cycling / soil nitrogen / nitrogen deposition / greenhouse gases emission / non-point source pollution / nitrogen use efficiency

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41771336, 41471267, 4211101081, 42161144002), Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y2021102), Key Research and Development Program of Hunan Province (2020NK2011), and Chinese Academy of Science and Technology Service Network Initiative Project (KFJ-STS-QYZD-2021-22-002).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Jianlin Shen, Yong Li, Yi Wang, Yanyan Li, Xiao Zhu, Wenqian Jiang, Yuyuan Li, and Jinshui Wu declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2022. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)