Nitrogen Biogeochemical Cycling in Forest Ecosystems

Dear Colleagues,

In most terrestrial ecosystems, including forests, nitrogen (N) is a major limiting nutrient for plant growth. Over the recent decades, nitrogen deposition has been rapidly increasing in most regions of the world. Though increased N deposition may alleviate N limitation and increase forest productivity, it usually causes N saturation, soil acidification, nutrient imbalance, biodiversity losses, and so on. Our understanding is not sufficient in terms of monitoring and observation of N deposition into forests, soil N leaching, gaseous N losses, and their responses to N deposition, despite an increasing concern around such issues.

The aims and scopes of the Special Issue are to present the new observations on N deposition, soil N transformations, and their interactions with cycles of carbon and other elements in forest ecosystems worldwide, in order to enhance the associated understandings.

This Special Issue will report N deposition to forests in some under-represented regions and the influences of N deposition on forest N cycling. It has long been a challenge to quantify field gaseous N losses, particularly for N₂. We will report the results quantified by ¹⁵N tracer techniques. We also explore soil N transformations, using either ¹⁵N natural abundance or ¹⁵N tracer techniques, and associated microbial composition by gene sequence analysis.

The research related to observations or modeling of N cycling in forests and interaction with other forest structures and functions is welcome.

Prof. Dr. Yunting Fang
Prof. Dr. Dejun Li
Dr. Feifei Zhu
Guest Editors

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