Soil carbon, nitrogen, soil fertility and climate change are tightly linked, new research shows

In a first-of-its-kind long-term study, a collaborative group of scientists, including senior author Ashley Keiser, assistant professor of soil ecology at the University Of Massachusetts Amherst's Stockbridge School of Agriculture, have discovered that soil carbon determines whether mineralized nitrogen is available in the soil as ammonium, or further transformed into either nitrates that are easily lost to runoff and contribute to toxic algal blooms or nitrous oxide, which is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere.