Responses of soil organic carbon turnover to nitrogen deposition are associated with nitrogen input rates: Derived from soil 14C evidences

Highlights: • Responses of SOC turnover to N deposition relate to N input rates. • Effect of N deposition could be not assessed comprehensively by soil incubation. • Varied N deposition levels across regions could cause different SOC turnover. Elevated atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition has exerted profound influences on ecosystems. Understanding the effects of N deposition on the dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC) is important in the studies of global carbon cycle. Although many studies have examined the effects of N deposition on SOC turnover using N addition experiments, the effects were reported to be different across studies. Thus, we lack a predictive understanding of how SOC turnover respond to atmospheric N deposition. The inconsistent results could be associated with ecosystem types and N addition rates. This study mainly wants to confirm the argument that the response of SOC turnover to N deposition is related with N input rates. We conducted a field experiment with multiple N addition levels (0, 3, 6, 12, and 24 g N m⁻²·yr⁻¹) in Inner Mongolia Grassland, China. To better reveal the responses of SOC turnover to N enrichment, this study measured the soil ¹⁴C contents, because it can indicate SOC turnover directly. Compared with the control treatment (0 g N m⁻²·yr⁻¹), N addition inhibits SOC turnover at the addition rate of 3 g N m⁻²·yr⁻¹, whereas SOC turnover is not affected when N addition rate was 6, 12, and 24 g N m⁻²·yr⁻¹. Our results suggest that N input rates affect the responses of SOC turnover to N enrichment. Thus, this study can confirm the argument mentioned above. Based on this study, it should be considered in the climate prediction model that varied atmospheric N deposition levels across regions may have different impacts on local SOC turnover. In addition, we also carried out a soil incubation to compare between the results obtained in incubation and that in ¹⁴C measurements. Two results are found to be inconsistent with each other. This indicates that soil respiration from incubation experiments could not comprehensively assess the effects of N deposition on SOC turnover.