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Record W4415254450 · doi:10.1139/cjss-2025-0019

Nitrogen mineralization in Canadian agricultural soils: a review of methods for quantifying soil nitrogen mineralization potential and estimating growing season nitrogen mineralization

2025· article· en· W4415254450 on OpenAlexafffundvenueabout
Chedzer-Clark Clément, David L. Burton, Luke Laurence, Paige A. Fehr, Kate A. Congreves, Jacynthe Dessureault‐Rompré

Bibliographic record

VenueCanadian Journal of Soil Science · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldAgricultural and Biological Sciences
TopicSoil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
Canadian institutionsUniversity of SaskatchewanOlds CollegeUniversité LavalDalhousie University
FundersW. Garfield Weston Foundation
KeywordsMineralization (soil science)Nitrogen cycleNitrogenSoil waterFertilizerAgriculture

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The ability of soils to provide a portion of the nitrogen (N) required by crops through the mineralization of organic matter is of great economic and environmental importance. Knowledge of the N available to crops from all sources is essential to improve fertilizer use efficiency and minimize the adverse effects of N losses on the environment. However, soil net N mineralization potential is seldom measured in routine soil testing procedures. This paper reviews the current methods of measuring net N mineralization provided by laboratories in Canada and discusses potential techniques that could be adopted for routine laboratory use. Soil testing services for measuring soil net N mineralization are limited in Canada, with some provinces lacking any method at all. Most of the currently available methods are biological. While chemical extraction methods may be faster and more cost-effective, only hot water-extractable N is offered as a routine chemical test. Biological methods are generally considered more reliable; however, other chemical extraction methods, such as UV absorbance of NaOH extract at 260 nm, calcium hypochlorite (Ca(ClO) 2 ), and direct-steam distillation with sodium hydroxide, show promise for routine testing due to their simplicity, and relatively strong correlation with N mineralization potential. Near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy is also a promising technique that could be adopted to measure N mineralization potential. This review demonstrates that these tests account for nearly 50% of the variability in plant N uptake or N 0 measured through incubation. While not perfect, they are “good enough” predictors of N mineralization to allow routine quantification of soil N mineralization and improve fertilizer N recommendations.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.002
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.447
Threshold uncertainty score0.899

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.002
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.001
Bibliometrics0.0110.014
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0020.002
Open science0.0020.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.027
GPT teacher head0.301
Teacher spread0.275 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreReview

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations4
Published2025
Admission routes4
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueCanadian Journal of Soil Science→Same topicSoil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics→French-language works237,207→