Deep soil contributions to global nitrogen budgets

Maya Almaraz (), Chao Wang and Michelle Y. Wong
Additional contact information
Maya Almaraz: Yale University
Chao Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Michelle Y. Wong: Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Previous estimates of deep soil inorganic nitrogen (N) reservoirs have been mainly limited to desert soils, however, recent evidence suggests that deep soil pools are far more ubiquitous across biomes and therefore may be important for global N budgets. Here, we used observations from 280 deep soil profiles (2-205 m) across a wide array of ecosystem and land cover types to seek insight into the full geospatial variation of deep soil nitrate. Using a random forest machine learning approach we estimate a total deep soil nitrate pool of 15.2 ( ± 1.1 SD) Pg of N. When included in the global soil N pool, our estimates of deep soil N increase the global N storage budget by 16%. Estimating these deep soil N pools continues to add to our understanding of soils as a fate for anthropogenically fixed N, and the critical role that deep soils play in our biosphere.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56132-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-56132-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-56132-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().