Abstract:

Nitrogen ( N) mineralization is an important process of the N biogeochemical cycle，and how to quantify and simulate is a key question on N cycle．As yet a variety of mathematical models with disparity of equations and parameters have been built to descript the soil N mineralization process．However，it is still debatable for application conditions，parameters and simulation results in different models．In this paper，latest models are comparatively evaluated to predict N mineralization，such as the simple function model，and environmental effect model which considering the soil environmental factors including temperature，moisture，and pH．The comparing results reveals that the single fraction first-order kinetic model may not descript the N mineralization process comprehensively because of its consideration of one single soil N pool and big systematic error between the simulating and validating results in different experimental stages．The two-component model and special model can be better used for simulating N mineralization．Environmental effect model considers environmental factors and different types of organic N pools．However，it's difficult to select model parameters in real scenarios due to it concerning a large number of environmental factors and complex processes．Overall，in light of the special climate hydrological conditions and soil environment of China，the composite model which includes influences of environmental factors should be focused on．It is crucial to promote the further verification in the future studies and realize the standardization and quantification of the experimental study．

Key words: soil nitrogen mineralization, simple function model, environmental effect model, factors affecting