Modelling carbon and nitrogen dynamics in a bare soil with and without straw incorporation

Summary Incorporating straw into the ploughed layer of soil affects the dynamics of carbon and nitrogen. A precise quantification of its short-term effect in agricultural fields is difficult because biological and physical processes interact and take place simultaneously. As an alternative to experimentation, investigations have turned to simulations using mechanistic models, and we have taken this approach. The goal of our study was to test a mechanistic and one-dimensional model of transport and biotransformation (PASTIS) against a data set obtained in a field experiment in northern France. We tested carbon and nitrogen dynamics by measuring C mineralization rates, the rates of gross immobilization and mineralization of N (using 15N tracing), and inorganic pools of N in the soil profile during 1 year in a bare soil with or without addition of wheat straw. Most of the model parameters were determined in independent experiments. We estimated the biological parameters from incubation experiments in the laboratory. The simulated results were in good agreement with experimental data, particularly for gross N rates. Hypotheses concerning the pathway of microbial assimilation and the dependence of decomposition on the size of the biomass were tested. The simulated net N immobilization due to addition of straw (8000 kg dry matter ha−1) reached a maximum of 64 kg N ha−1 after 2 months, whereas the observed value was 66 kg N ha−1. The model indicated that after 13 months the incorporation of straw had reduced the net amount of nitrogen mineralized by 13% and the amount of leached nitrate by 27%. The sensitivity analysis to the depth of straw incorporation indicated that the deeper was the incorporation the less was the leaching and the mineralization of nitrogen.