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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Dynamic Changes of Soil Nitrogen Fractions
at Aggregate Scales in a Chronosequence
of Chinese Fir Plantations
1
Guangxi Colleges and Universities Key Laboratory for Cultivation and Utilization of Subtropical Forest Plantation,
Guangxi Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Conservation, College of Forestry, Guangxi University,
Nanning 530004, China
Submission date: 2024-03-13
Final revision date: 2024-04-28
Acceptance date: 2024-05-14
Online publication date: 2024-09-20
Publication date: 2025-01-28
Corresponding author
Shengqiang Wang
Guangxi Colleges and Universities Key Laboratory for Cultivation and Utilization of Subtropical Forest Plantation, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Conservation, College of Forestry, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China
Guangxi Colleges and Universities Key Laboratory for Cultivation and Utilization of Subtropical Forest Plantation, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Conservation, College of Forestry, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2025;34(3):3441-3455
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Soil nitrogen (N) is an important limiting element for forest production, as it is one of the required
nutrients for plant development in forest ecosystems. However, research on the dynamic changes of soil
N in Chinese fir plantations with different stand ages remains elusive, especially from the perspective
of aggregates. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the changes in the contents and stocks of
total nitrogen (TN) and labile nitrogen (LN) fractions in various soil aggregates (>2, 2-1, 1-0.25, and
<0.25 mm) with different stand ages of Chinese fir plantations in Guangxi, China. Additionally, soil
aggregates were categorized using the optimum moisture sieving method and compared soil with the TN
and LN fractions of aggregates and bulk soil. The LN fractions included alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen
(AN), particulate organic nitrogen (PON), microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN), ammonium nitrogen
(NH4+-N), and nitrate nitrogen (NO3--N). Results showed that stand ages and aggregate properties
considerably affected soil N contents and stocks in Chinese fir plantations. Regardless of stand age, soil
N contents increased as aggregate size dropped, although soil N stocks displayed the opposite tendency.
Both soil N contents and stocks of Chinese fir plantations grew considerably until 17 years ago and then
dropped dramatically thereafter. Pearson’s correlation analysis and redundancy analysis (RDA) further
demonstrated that the key factors influencing soil N contents and stocks were soil aggregate stability
and macro-aggregate proportions (>2 mm), which indicated that increasing coarse macro-aggregate
proportions and soil aggregate stability was conducive to promoting the accumulation of soil N storage
in Chinese fir plantations. In conclusion, our study reported the importance of maintaining the stability
and composition of soil aggregate for N pool storage and circulation during the development of Chinese
fir plantations, which offered new theoretical ideas for improving soil fertility and managing sustainably
for Chinese fir plantations.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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