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Microbial biomass nitrogen pool in soils from a warm temperate grassland, and from deciduous and evergreen forests in Chiba, central Japan

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Abstract

We evaluated the status of the microbial biomass N pool in grassland, and in deciduous and evergreen forest soils in Chiba, central Japan. Microbial biomass N, a labile fraction of total N in the soil, ranged from 6.96 g N m-2 (15 cm depth) in the grassland to 24.8 g in the deciduous and 20.7 g in the evergreen soils, on a landscape basis. Thus the pattern in the grassland and in the forest soils differed. The N flush measured by a fumigation-incubation method indicated that in the grassland soil microbial biomass N was underestimated by a factor of 2.6 compared with the results from a fumigation-extraction method, because of heavy N immobilization in the microbial biomass. This was in contrast to results from the forest soils, which did not immobilize N. Thus, the forest soils were in a steady-state condition compared with the grassland which formed a seral phase in the ecological succession. Simple correlation coefficients indicated a significant positive relationship between biomass N and organic C in the soil and the N concentration in the litter, the main component of organic matter in the soils of the three ecosystems.

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Billore, S.K., Ohsawa, M., Numata, M. et al. Microbial biomass nitrogen pool in soils from a warm temperate grassland, and from deciduous and evergreen forests in Chiba, central Japan. Biol Fertil Soils 19, 124–128 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00336147

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00336147

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