Volume 25 Special Volume: Renewable Resources from Wet and Rewetted Peatlands (2019) Article 6
The fate of nitrogen derived from mown wetland biomass in a swampy river valley landscape
by A. Wysocka-Czubaszek, R. Czubaszek, S. Roj-Rojewski and P. Banaszuk
Published online: 26.05.2019
Summary
Wetlands provide a natural environment for nutrient attenuation; however, these ecosystems may also be used as a source of nutrients for soil fertilisation. Anaerobic digestion (AD) of mown plants from wet areas is a promising option to solve the problem of harvested biomass, while the digestate produced during the AD process can be a valuable nitrogen (N) fertiliser. An incubation experiment was run to investigate the effect of fertilising with digestates produced from four wetland plant species (reed sweet-grass, common reed, tufted sedge, reed canary grass) on inorganic-N dynamics in arable soil typical for the region. The amount of N in all digestates was similar and ranged from 46.8 ± 5.6 to 61.5 ± 3.1 g kg-1 (dw). The inorganic-N concentration in the soil increased during the first two weeks, mainly due to a reduction in NH4-N. Rapid NO3-N production led to the amount of NO3-N almost doubling as a result of fertilisation. In all amended soils the N dynamics were similar and did not differ from those in soil fertilised with digestate derived from maize. The incorporation of N from biomass harvested in wetlands into soils on the adjacent arable land could play an important role in the N cycle of a swampy river valley landscape by reducing the need for additional N inputs and thus reducing the transfer of N from agricultural uplands to the river.
Citation
Wysocka-Czubaszek, A., Czubaszek, R., Roj-Rojewski, S. & Banaszuk, P. (2019) The fate of nitrogen derived from mown wetland biomass in a swampy river valley landscape. Mires and Peat, 25(06), 1–13. (Online: http://www.mires-and-peat.net/pages/volumes/map25/map2506.php); doi:
10.19189/MaP.2017.OMB.319
Reviewers
IMCG and IPS
acknowledge the work of the reviewers. |
