165 results for group: journal-article


Addition of a volcanic rockdust to soils has no observable effects on plant yield and nutrient status or on soil microbial activity

Atefeh Ramezanian, A. Sigrun Dahlin, Colin D. Campbell, Stephen Hillier, Birgitta Mannerstedt-Fogelfors & Ingrid Öborn Abstract Rising costs and pressure on supplies of commercial mineral fertilizers and increasing markets for organically produced foods and feeds have led to a growing interest in soil amendments to supply plant nutrients. Rockdust is a by-product of quarrying and its effectiveness to supply plants with nutrients has been a contested issue and there have been no assessments of its effect on soil biota other than plants. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of a commercially-available volcanic rockdust application on ...

Impacts of enhanced weathering on biomass production for negative emission technologies and soil hydrology

Wagner de Oliveira Garcia, Thorben Amann, Jens Hartmann, Kristine Karstens, Alexander Popp, Lena R. Boysen, Pete Smith, and Daniel Goll Abstract Limiting global mean temperature changes to well below 2 ∘C likely requires a rapid and large-scale deployment of negative emission technologies (NETs). Assessments so far have shown a high potential of biomass-based terrestrial NETs, but only a few assessments have included effects of the commonly found nutrient-deficient soils on biomass production. Here, we investigate the deployment of enhanced weathering (EW) to supply nutrients to areas of afforestation–reforestation and naturally growing ...

Elevated growth and biomass along temperate forest edges

Luca L. Morreale, Jonathan R. Thompson, Xiaojing Tang, Andrew B. Reinmann & Lucy R. Hutyra Abstract Fragmentation transforms the environment along forest edges. The prevailing narrative, driven by research in tropical systems, suggests that edge environments increase tree mortality and structural degradation resulting in net decreases in ecosystem productivity. We show that, in contrast to tropical systems, temperate forest edges exhibit increased forest growth and biomass with no change in total mortality relative to the forest interior. We analyze >48,000 forest inventory plots across the north-eastern US using a quasi-experimental matching ...

Trace Elements as Fertilizer Micronutrients

Izabela Michalak, Agnieszka Saeid, Katarzyna Chojnacka, Mateusz Gramza Abstract Trace elements are important in human, animal, and plant nutrition. One of the main sources of food for humans and animals are plants. Therefore, the effect of trace elements (optimal doses, as well as excess and deficiency) on plant growth is described. Plants use several trace elements in small quantities. In this chapter special attention is paid to boron, cobalt, copper, iodine, iron, molybdenum, manganese, selenium, zinc, silicon, nickel and chlorine as fertilizer micronutrients. The functions of each trace element are described, both with the symptoms of their ...

Increased yield and CO2 sequestration potential with the C4 cereal Sorghum bicolor cultivated in basaltic rock dust-amended agricultural soil

Mike E. Kelland, Peter W. Wade, Amy L. Lewis, Lyla L. Taylor, Binoy Sarkar, M. Grace Andrews, Mark R. Lomas, T. E. Anne Cotton, Simon J. Kemp, Rachael H. James, Christopher R. Pearce, Sue E. Hartley, Mark E. Hodson, Jonathan R. Leake, Steven A. Banwart, David J. Beerling Abstract Land-based enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a biogeochemical carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy aiming to accelerate natural geological processes of carbon sequestration through application of crushed silicate rocks, such as basalt, to croplands and forested landscapes. However, the efficacy of the approach when undertaken with basalt, and its potential co-benefits ...

Potential of global croplands and bioenergy crops for climate change mitigation through deployment for enhanced weathering

Ilsa B. Kantola, Michael D. Masters, David J. Beerling, Stephen P. Long and Evan H. DeLucia Abstract Conventional row crop agriculture for both food and fuel is a source of carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) to the atmosphere, and intensifying production on agricultural land increases the potential for soil C loss and soil acidification due to fertilizer use. Enhanced weathering (EW) in agricultural soils—applying crushed silicate rock as a soil amendment—is a method for combating global climate change while increasing nutrient availability to plants. EW uses land that is already producing food and fuel to sequester carbon (C), and ...

Nitrogen in rock: Occurrences and biogeochemical implications

JoAnn M. Holloway,Randy A. Dahlgren Abstract There is a growing interest in the role of bedrock in global nitrogen cycling and potential for increased ecosystem sensitivity to human impacts in terrains with elevated background nitrogen concentrations. Nitrogen-bearing rocks are globally distributed and comprise a potentially large pool of nitrogen in nutrient cycling that is frequently neglected because of a lack of routine analytical methods for quantification. Nitrogen in rock originates as organically bound nitrogen associated with sediment, or in thermal waters representing a mixture of sedimentary, mantle, and meteoric sources of nitrogen. ...

Enhancing phytolith carbon sequestration in rice ecosystems through basalt powder amendment

Fengshan Guo,, Zhaoliang Song, Leigh Sullivan, Hailong Wang, Xueyan Liu, Xudong Wang, Zimin Li, Yuying Zhaoa Abstract Global warming as a result of rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 emission is significantly influencing world’s economy and human activities. Carbon sequestration in phytoliths is regarded as a highly stable carbon sink mechanism in terrestrial ecosystems to mitigate climate change. However, the response of plant phytolith-occluded carbon (PhytOC) to external silicon amendments remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the effects of basalt powder (BP) amendment on phytolith carbon sequestration in rice (Oryza sativa), a ...

Quorum Sensing in Nitrogen-Fixing Rhizobia

Juan E. González and Melanie M. Marketon Abstract Members of the rhizobia are distinguished for their ability to establish a nitrogen-fixing symbiosis with leguminous plants. While many details of this relationship remain a mystery, much effort has gone into elucidating the mechanisms governing bacterium-host recognition and the events leading to symbiosis. Several signal molecules, including plant-produced flavonoids and bacterially produced nodulation factors and exopolysaccharides, are known to function in the molecular conversation between the host and the symbiont. Work by several laboratories has shown that an additional mode of regulat...

Critical evaluation of strategies for mineral fortification of staple food crops

Sonia Gómez-Galera, Eduard Rojas, Duraialagaraja Sudhakar, Changfu Zhu, Ana M Pelacho, Teresa Capell, Paul Christou Abstract Staple food crops, in particular cereal grains, are poor sources of key mineral nutrients. As a result, the world's poorest people, generally those subsisting on a monotonous cereal diet, are also those most vulnerable to mineral deficiency diseases. Various strategies have been proposed to deal with micronutrient deficiencies including the provision of mineral supplements, the fortification of processed food, the biofortification of crop plants at source with mineral-rich fertilizers and the implementation of breeding ...