Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems

Abstract

Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems considers manuscripts dealing with all aspects of carbon and nutrient cycling as well as management and examining their effect in ecological, agronomic, environmental and economic terms. Target agroecosystems include field crop, organic agriculture, urban or peri-urban agriculture, horticulture, bioenergy, agroforestry, livestock, pasture, and fallow systems as well as their system components such as plants and the fertility, chemistry, physics or faunal and micro-biology of soils. The scale of observation is the cycles in the soil-plant-animal system on or relevant to a field or watershed level as well as inputs from or losses to the anthroposphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere. Studies should thus consider the wider system in the examination of cycling and fluxes in agroecosystems or their components. These typically include multi-year field observations, farm gate budgets, watershed studies, life cycle assessments, enterprise and economic analyses, or regional and global modeling. Short-term pot, lab or glasshouse studies under controlled conditions may only be considered when including sophisticated measurements that would be unfeasible outdoors over longer time scales and are usually placed in Collections. They need to improve our mechanistic understanding of nutrient cycling and flows on a field-scale. Management objectives may not only include the maximization of food, fiber and fuel production, but also its environmental and economic impact.