Short-term dynamics of carbon and nitrogen after tillage in a freshwater marsh of northeast China

The Sanjiang Plain, one of the largest freshwater marshes in China, has experienced intensive cultivation over the past 50 years. However, there were few reports of short-term dynamics of soil carbon and nitrogen and CO₂ emission after tillage. In this paper, we studied the short-term dynamics of carbon and nitrogen after tillage in a freshwater marsh of northeast China. The results showed that response of carbon and nitrogen dynamic to tillage was different for intact wetland and soil cultivated for 10 years. Tillage was followed by immediate and significant increases in CO₂ efflux, which peaked at 0.25 h after tillage, four times higher than control in the wetland soils; while, only 2.5 times higher than control in the cultivated soils. Although, dissolved organic C (DOC) increased, the relative stability of microbial biomass C (MBC) pools together with the decreased respiration in the wetland soil suggested that the tillage did not lead to a burst in microbial activity and growth. Other factors such as moisture content before and after tillage may play an important role in determining microbial activity in the intact wetland. On the contrary, although dissolved organic C did not change, MBC pools, and soil respiration increase after tillage, suggesting tillage led to an increase in microbial activity and growth in the cultivated soil. Tillage initiated changes in soil aeration that was an important factor affecting soil microbiology in the long history of cultivation. Net N mineralization and nitrification occurred in both wetland and cultivated soils, but at different rates after tillage that in the intact wetland soil was higher than cultivated soil. Macroaggregates in the wetland soil would be expected to contain larger amounts of organic matter, and thus release a larger source of newly available substrate for microbes after tillage. In the intact wetland soil, ammonium, nitrate, and dissolved organic N (DON) concentrations were significantly negatively correlated to soil moisture (p < 0.01), suggesting high soil moisture in the natural wetland was not in favor of N mineralization.