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Distribution and Biodegradability of Water Soluble Organic Carbon and Nitrogen in Subarctic Alaskan Soils Under Three Different Land Uses

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Applied Manure and Nutrient Chemistry for Sustainable Agriculture and Environment

Abstract

Water-extractable organic matter (WEOM) contains labile organic carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) and is sensitive to soil management. However, knowledge about quantitative changes of water soluble organic C (WSOC) and N (WSON) impacted by land use conversion is still limited. In this chapter, the level and degradability of WSOC and WSON in soils sampled from subarctic Alaska under three different land use managements (i.e. forest, agriculture; and grassland converted from agricultural use and under a Conservation Reserve Program-CRP) were examined. There was no statistical difference of WSOC and WSON among three land uses. Furthermore, WSOC was dominated by large (>0.45 μm) and small (<1 kDa) size molecules in CRP and forest soils, while small molecules predominated in agricultural soils. All WEOM fractions displayed three similar fluorophore components (two humic acid-like, fulvic-like and a protein-like), indicating that they were major components of WSOC and WSON, and the impact of land uses was mainly on the quantity, rather than on the composition, of WEOM. Laboratory incubation revealed that the biodegradability of cold or hot WEOC was significantly correlated (p < 0.01) with the protein-like component, indicating that a protein-like fluorophore represented a labile fraction in cold and hot WEOM pools. High correlation was found between cold and hot WSON and other chemically extracted potential mineralizable N indexes, showing that hot WSON was a part of acid or alkaline hydrolysable N. Information derived from this chapter increased understanding of subarctic soil WEOM properties and its biodegradability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA

    Mingchu Zhang

  2. Editorial Department of the Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering, No. 41 Maizidian Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100125, China

    Aiqin Zhao

  3. Southern Regional Research Center, USDA-ARS, New Orleans, LA, 70124, USA

    Zhongqi He

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  1. Mingchu Zhang
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  2. Aiqin Zhao
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  3. Zhongqi He
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Correspondence to Mingchu Zhang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Southern Regional Research Center, USDA-ARS, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

    Zhongqi He

  2. Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA

    Hailin Zhang

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Zhang, M., Zhao, A., He, Z. (2014). Distribution and Biodegradability of Water Soluble Organic Carbon and Nitrogen in Subarctic Alaskan Soils Under Three Different Land Uses. In: He, Z., Zhang, H. (eds) Applied Manure and Nutrient Chemistry for Sustainable Agriculture and Environment. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8807-6_15

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