Abstract

Nitrate and ammonium was measured in soil water from suction cups under different plant communities. Two communities were more or less pure clover, two were mixtures of Trifolium pratense and Phleum pratense, two were pure grass communities, five communities were grass dominated, but with some legumes and other herbs and one community was dominated by clover and Achillea millefolium. Measurements were made in autumn 1998 and 1999 and during the entire snow free period 2000 and 2001. Nitrate was absent in almost all samples from grass dominated communities, but was increasing exponentially with increasing clover content. Communities dominated by clover had moderate nitrate concentrations except for 2000 when almost all clover died soon after emergence in the spring. During the following summer there was first a peak of ammonium in the soil water followed by a nitrate peak that was strongest and prevailed longest in the pure legume communities. The clover was resown when we found that it was dead but the seedlings obviously did not have enough roots to reduce the nitrate concentrations in the soil. The summer was very rainy so there was an obvious risk of nitrate leaching. Ammonium concentrations were generally low, except for the spring of 2000. Nitrate leaching values calculated from runoff measurements from the same site but other fields will also be presented

Published in

Publisher: COST Action 852: Quality Legume-Based Forage Systems for Contrasting Environment

Conference

Workshop Sward dynamics, N-flows and forage utilization in legume-based systems

SLU Authors

• Palmborg, Cecilia

  • Department of Agricultural Research for Northern Sweden, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
Agricultural Science


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/6475