Aims and scope

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 may include typically multi-year field observations, farm gate budgets, watershed studies, life cycle assessments, enterprise and economic analyses, or regional and global modeling. Short-term or glasshouse studies are only considered when including sophisticated measurements that would be unfeasible outdoors over longer time scales. Such studies under controlled conditions are preferably placed in Special Issues and should improve our understanding of nutrients 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. The results must allow mechanistic conclusions of broad applicability and distinguish itself from empirical results or case studies of merely local or regional importance. If unsure whether a study fits into this scope, please contact the editors with a brief inquiry before manuscript submission. Please refer to the editorial by Lehmann et al. 2021 in Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems (Volume 119, issue 1, January 2021) for further explanations on criteria for successful submissions to our journal.
 
Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems provides timely publication of papers and rapid communications based on original research as well as reviews, perspectives and commentaries of interest to an international readership. Reviews cover important research topics by not only summarizing published research but by providing new insights and concepts through innovative data analysis and synthesis. Perspectives succinctly discuss emergent ideas, controversial concepts, or policy issues with respect to carbon and nutrient cycles in agroecosystems and typically focus on one issue rather than cover an entire topic. Commentaries provide very brief responses to previous publications in this or other journals by expanding on published data, raising questions or highlighting broader issues without primarily providing a critique to the data. Reviews are solicited by the editors, but proposals are highly encouraged. Proposals of perspectives and commentaries typically originate from authors but have to be approved by the editors. Detailed format requirements are outlined in the guide to authors. Special issues are solicited by the editors or proposed by individuals or groups to cover a specific topic and are subject to the same rigorous review as individual submissions. All contributions should be submitted in English.