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Modelling of microbial carbon and nitrogen turnover in soil with special emphasis on N-trace gases emission

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Abstract

We present a new model unifying state-of-the-art descriptions of microbial processes for denitrification, nitrification and decomposition of soil organic matter. The model is of medium complexity, filling a gap between simplistic model approaches with low predictive power and complex models, which are difficult to verify experimentally. The model Microbial Carbon and Nitrogen Turnover in soils (MiCNiT) is written in Ansi C++ and embedded into a modelling framework (MoBiLE) that provides initial conditions and accompanying ecosystem processes such as N uptake by plants, litterfall, soil water and soil temperature with established model approaches. The MiCNiT model explicitly calculates decomposition, dynamics of microbial biomass, denitrification, autotrophic and heterotrophic nitrification, applying the microbial activity concept, as well as transport of gases and solutes between anaerobic and aerobic soil fractions and through the soil profile. The model was tested against N2O and CO2 emission as well as C and N pool data from the Höglwald Forest, Germany. Due to a detailed description of the soil biochemistry and gaseous transfers, MiCNiT is capable of simulating soil air NO, N2O and N2 concentrations and the net exchange of these gases at the soil-atmosphere interface, including a possible net uptake of N2O by soils.

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Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and acknowledge the European Commission funded research project NitroEurope IP (contract 017841), and the ESF Nitrogen in Europe (NinE) program for supporting the research.

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Author notes

  1. Sergey Blagodatsky

    Present address: Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, 23 St Machar Drive, Aberdeen, AB24 3UU, UK

  2. Christian Werner

    Present address: LOEWE Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BIK-F), Senckenberganlage 25, D-60325, Frankfurt, Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Atmospheric Environmental Research (IMK-IFU), Kreuzeckbahnstr. 19, 82467, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

    Sergey Blagodatsky, Rüdiger Grote, Ralf Kiese, Christian Werner & Klaus Butterbach-Bahl

  2. Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science, Russian Academy of Sciences, 142290, Pushchino, Russia

    Sergey Blagodatsky

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Correspondence to Sergey Blagodatsky.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 1 Model performances against experimental measurements of CO2 and N2O emission from forest soil (Höglwald, year 1995)
Full size table
Table 2 The sensitivity of model outputs to variation of selected soil properties (+/− 25%). An increase or a decrease in% of output variables in comparison with output baseline values is shown. 1-Microbial activity data are shown for upper mineral layer
Full size table

Combined temperature and moisture reduction factor (Stange 2007):

$$ fact\_mt = \frac{2}{{\frac{1}{{fact\_m}} + \frac{1}{{fact\_t}}}}, $$
(A1)

where

$$ fact\_m = \frac{1}{{1 + EXP((wfps - P1)*P2)}} $$
(A2)

- empirical function for moisture control of microbial processes in soil and fact_t is O’Neill optimum function for temperature control of biological processes (Diekkrüger et al. 1995):

$$ fact\_t = {\left( {\frac{{{T_{\max }} - T}}{{{T_{\max }} - {T_{opt}}}}} \right)^a}*\exp \left( {a*\left( {\frac{{T - {T_{opt}}}}{{{T_{\max }} - {T_{opt}}}}} \right)} \right), $$
(A3)

Where T max —maximum temperature, T opt —optimal temperature, a—is the shape parameter of O’Neill function.

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Blagodatsky, S., Grote, R., Kiese, R. et al. Modelling of microbial carbon and nitrogen turnover in soil with special emphasis on N-trace gases emission. Plant Soil 346, 297–330 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-011-0821-z

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