Denitrification in suburban lawn soils

Abstract

There is great uncertainty about the fate of nitrogen (N) added to urban and suburban lawns. We used direct flux and in situ chamber methods to measure N and NO fluxes from lawns instrumented with soil O sensors. We hypothesized that soil O, moisture, and available NO were the most important controls on denitrification and that N and NO fluxes would be high following fertilizer addition and precipitation events. While our results support these hypotheses, the thresholds of soil O, moisture, and NO availability required to see significant N fluxes were greater than expected. Denitrification rates were high in saturated, fertilized soils, but low under all other conditions. Annual denitrification was calculated to be 14.0 ± 3.6 kg N ha yr, with 5% of the growing season accounting for >80% of the annual activity. Denitrification is thus an important means of removing reactive N in residential landscapes, but varies markedly in space, time, and with factors that affect soil saturation (texture, structure, compaction) and NO availability (fertilization). Rates of in situ NO flux were low; however, when recently fertilized soils saturated with water were incubated in the laboratory, we saw extraordinarily high rates of NO production for the first few hours of incubation, followed by rapid NO consumption later in the experiment. These findings indicate a lag time between accelerated NO production and counterbalancing increases in NO consumption; thus, we cannot yet conclude that lawns are an insignificant source of NO in our study area.