Fates of slurry-nitrogen applied to mountain grasslands: the importance of dinitrogen emissions versus plant N uptake.

ABSTRACT: Intensive fertilization of grasslands with cattle slurry can cause high environmental nitrogen (N) losses in form of ammonia (NH₃), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and nitrate (NO₃ ^-) leaching. Still, knowledge on short-term fertilizer N partitioning between plants and dinitrogen (N₂) emissions is lacking. Therefore, we applied highly ¹⁵N-enriched cattle slurry (97 kg N ha^-1) to pre-alpine grassland field mesocosms. We traced the slurry ¹⁵N in the plant-soil system and to denitrification losses (N₂, N₂O) over 29 days in high temporal resolution. Gaseous ammonia (NH₃), N₂ as well N₂O losses at about 20 kg N ha^-1 were observed only within the first 3 

SUBMITTER: Dannenmann M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11910402 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature