Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Connecting Ecosystem and Geoscience Processes
- Part II Transport Processes and Conservation Budgets in Biogeoscience
- Part III Coupling Hillslope Geomorphology, Soils, Hydrology, and Ecosystems
- 5 Landscape Evolution Models and Ecohydrologic Processes
- 6 Soil Mantled Hillslopes: Intersections of Geomorphology, Soil Science, and Ecology
- 7 Interactions between Precipitation and Vegetation Canopies
- 8 Constraints on Nutrient Dynamics in Terrestrial Vegetation
- 9 Evapotranspiration
- Part IV Coupling Fluvial and Aeolian Geomorphology, Hydrology/Hydraulics, and Ecosystems
- Index
- References
8 - Constraints on Nutrient Dynamics in Terrestrial Vegetation
from Part III - Coupling Hillslope Geomorphology, Soils, Hydrology, and Ecosystems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2016
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Connecting Ecosystem and Geoscience Processes
- Part II Transport Processes and Conservation Budgets in Biogeoscience
- Part III Coupling Hillslope Geomorphology, Soils, Hydrology, and Ecosystems
- 5 Landscape Evolution Models and Ecohydrologic Processes
- 6 Soil Mantled Hillslopes: Intersections of Geomorphology, Soil Science, and Ecology
- 7 Interactions between Precipitation and Vegetation Canopies
- 8 Constraints on Nutrient Dynamics in Terrestrial Vegetation
- 9 Evapotranspiration
- Part IV Coupling Fluvial and Aeolian Geomorphology, Hydrology/Hydraulics, and Ecosystems
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.
George Eliot, Middlemarch.Nutrients, along with carbon, water and solar radiation, are required by virtually all plants to produce new biomass and, eventually, new offspring. Terrestrial plant growth is almost always limited strongly by the availability of one or more nutrients. On some soils growth is restricted by the excessive availability of potentially toxic elements. Plant biomass production and turnover have a major influence on nutrient cycling processes because many are microbial, fueled by plant-derived carbon (Bardgett, 2005; Mulder et al., 2013). This interdependence between nutrient availability and growth is manifested at large spatial and over long temporal scales as variations in ecosystem productivity, vegetation composition and soil development (Anderson-Teixeira et al., 2008; Fernández-Martínez et al., 2014; Hayes et al., 2014), but it originates at the scale of a soil pore, root cell or fungal hypha. It is at this scale that nutrients enter vegetation, but also at which nutrient capture is limited by important physical, chemical and biological factors. These small-scale constraints are the focus of this chapter.
The aim of this chapter is to explain how these constraints operate, how plants have evolved ways to subvert them, and to examine some of their consequences at the larger spatial and longer temporal scales at which ecological and biogeochemical processes are often studied. To achieve this aim, I use information that originated in mechanistic studies of nutrient dynamics in agriculture (Tinker and Nye, 2000; Gregory, 2006), but which is now recognized as a fundamental aspect of both plant ecology and terrestrial biogeochemistry (Fitter and Hay, 2002; Chapin et al., 2011; Schlesinger and Bernhardt, 2013).
Nutrients in Vegetation
Fundamentals
Macronutrients (N, P, K, S, Ca, Mg and Si) are those present in plant tissues in the largest quantities; micronutrients (Na, Cl, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Mo, B and, in some species, Ni and Co) are required in much smaller abundances. Both macro- and micronutrients are essential for plant metabolism; some (Na, Si, Co and Ni) are essential only for certain species or in particular circumstances.
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- A Biogeoscience Approach to Ecosystems , pp. 254 - 291Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016
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