Comparison of nitrogen mineralized under anaerobic and aerobic conditions for some agricultural and forest soils of washington

Abstract

Seven agricultural soils and 8 forest soils were tested for mineralizable N using both anaerobic and aerobic incubation procedures. Each procedure had been used previously to develop N indices for agricultural and forested ecosystems. Forest soils mineralized less N under anaerobic than aerobic conditions, while the opposite was true for agricultural soils. There were statistically significant correlations between the 2 methods for each of the time periods tested. Experimental variations were consistently lower than previously reported.