Impacts of nitrogen deposition on forest mineral

Forest soil in-organic-N concentrations are predicted to increase as the result of increased mineralization due to temperature increases, moreover elevated atmospheric reactive N deposition is considered one the proximate drivers of global climate change. We measured the impact of simulated atmospheric nitrogen deposition, on forest soil carbon sequestration and examined the consequences for ecosystem function.

We traced the isotopic and molecular pathways through the microbial biomass and measured the concurrent biogeochemical processes as they happened in the field, using a novel tool box of stable isotope and molecular techniques against a background of climate change in Austrian and European forests. We directly traced the decomposition of isotope labelled litter in the forest, over two years across a European climatic gradient in highly spatially and temporally replicated experiments.