BonaRes Thematic Workshop Nitrogen Cycling in Agricultural Ecosystems

19. - 21. April, 2023

Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

Use and cycling of reactive nitrogen in agricultural ecosystems is on the one hand of pivotal importance to sustain productivity and thus, food security. On the other hand the little efficient use of fertilizer nitrogen by plants results in detrimental effects on soil quality as well as in undesired reactive nitrogen losses along hydrological and gaseous pathways that compromise air, soil and water quality also in adjacent natural ecosystems. This workshop aims at bringing together experts from the BonaRes community in order to summarize the current state of knowledge on nitrogen cycling in agricultural soils and to identify most important knowledge gaps that are relevant to improve nitrogen management, i.e., mainly to improve nitrogen use efficiency and reduce nitrogen losses to the environment. Furthermore, the workshop participants will discuss approaches to synthesize the nitrogen research that is conducted in different BonaRes A projects with the primary goal to identify universal indicators of changes of nitrogen-related soil functions and to identify the key processes that should be considered in modeling N cycling and how they can be parametrized.