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News and Views
Soil-water bypass -
Fred M. Phillips
doi:10.1038/ngeo762
Hydrologists have thought of soil as a kind of giant sponge that soaks up precipitation and slowly releases it to streams. But according to new evidence the soil water used by vegetation may be largely decoupled from the water that flows through soils to streams.
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Fire's black legacy -
Caroline M. Preston
doi:10.1038/ngeo642
Forest fires convert a small portion of burning vegetation into charred solid residues such as charcoal. A survey of Scandinavian forest soils reveals that charcoal has a highly patchy distribution, and a shorter-than-expected lifetime.
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Heat-proof carbon compound -
Cindy Prescott
doi:10.1038/ngeo371
Two-thirds of terrestrial carbon is stored as organic matter in soils, but its response to warming has yet to be resolved. A soil warming experiment in a Canadian forest has revealed that the leaf-derived compound cutin is resistant to decomposition under elevated temperatures.
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Letters
Large N2O emissions from cryoturbated peat soil in tundra -
Maija E. Repo, Sanna Susiluoto, Saara E. Lind, Simo Jokinen, Vladimir Elsakov, Christina Biasi, Tarmo Virtanen & Pertti J. Martikainen
doi:10.1038/ngeo434
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas whose concentration is increasing in the atmosphere; the highest emissions have been observed from agricultural and tropical soils. Now, measurements in subarctic East European tundra show that bare surfaces on permafrost peatlands, known as peat circles, release large quantities of nitrous oxide.
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Molybdenum limitation of asymbiotic nitrogen fixation in tropical forest soils -
Alexander R. Barron, Nina Wurzburger, Jean Phillipe Bellenger, S. Joseph Wright, Anne M. L. Kraepiel & Lars O. Hedin
doi:10.1038/ngeo366
Biological nitrogen fixation limits plant growth and carbon exchange at local to global scales. Long-term nutrient manipulation experiments in forests and short-term manipulation experiments in microcosms suggest that the micronutrient molybdenum, a component of the nitrogen-fixing enzyme nitrogenase, limits nitrogen fixation by asymbiotic bacteria in tropical soils in Panama.
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Australian climate—carbon cycle feedback reduced by soil black carbon -
Johannes Lehmann, Jan Skjemstad, Saran Sohi, John Carter, Michele Barson, Pete Falloon, Kevin Coleman, Peter Woodbury & Evelyn Krull
doi:10.1038/ngeo358
Global warming is likely to increase soil organic carbon decomposition, and thus CO2 release to the atmosphere, creating a positive feedback cycle. Inclusion of realistic estimates of soil black carbon in a climate model results in a decrease in soil CO2 emissions in Australia by up to 24.4% following a 3 °C warming over 100 years, suggesting that black carbon reduces the strength of this feedback.
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Tropical-cyclone-driven erosion of the terrestrial biosphere from mountains -
Robert G. Hilton, Albert Galy, Niels Hovius, Meng-Chiang Chen, Ming-Jame Horng & Hongey Chen
doi:10.1038/ngeo333
The transfer of organic carbon from the terrestrial biosphere to the oceans via erosion and riverine transport constitutes an important component of the global carbon cycle. Measurements of particulate organic carbon load and composition in the LiWu River, Taiwan, during cyclone-triggered floods suggest that tropical cyclones may facilitate the delivery of non-fossil particulate organic carbon to the ocean and its subsequent burial.
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Articles
Arsenic release from paddy soils during monsoon flooding -
Linda C. Roberts, Stephan J. Hug, Jessica Dittmar, Andreas Voegelin, Ruben Kretzschmar, Bernhard Wehrli, Olaf A. Cirpka, Ganesh C. Saha, M. Ashraf Ali & A. Borhan M. Badruzzaman
doi:10.1038/ngeo723
Bangladesh relies heavily on groundwater for the irrigation of dry-season rice. Analysis of soil porewater and floodwater in rice paddy fields during the monsoon season in Bangladesh suggests that flooding removes a significant amount of arsenic from the soils.
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The contribution of manure and fertilizer nitrogen to atmospheric nitrous oxide since 1860 -
Eric A. Davidson
doi:10.1038/ngeo608
Atmospheric concentrations of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, have increased since 1860. A regression model indicates that conversion of 2% of manure nitrogen and 2.5% of fertilizer nitrogen could explain the pattern of increasing nitrous oxide concentrations between 1860 and 2005, including a rise in the rate of increase around 1960.
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High stocks of soil organic carbon in the North American Arctic region -
Chien-Lu Ping, Gary J. Michaelson, Mark T. Jorgenson, John M. Kimble, Howard Epstein, Vladimir E. Romanovsky & Donald A. Walker
doi:10.1038/ngeo284
The Arctic soil organic-carbon pool is poorly constrained. Measurements of soil organic carbon in the North American Arctic reveal that the carbon store in this region is larger than previous estimates suggest, and highly dependent on landscape type.
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Mechanisms for retention of bioavailable nitrogen in volcanic rainforest soils -
Dries Huygens, Pascal Boeckx, Pamela Templer, Leandro Paulino, Oswald Van Cleemput, Carlos Oyarzún, Christoph Müller & Roberto Godoy
doi:10.1038/ngeo252
Pristine temperate rainforests are known to produce large amounts of bioavailable nitrogen, with only minimal loss. Tracing 15N in volcanic soils of a temperate evergreen rainforest in southern Chile helps to further unravel the retention mechanisms for bioavailable nitrogen in these ecosystems.
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