Soil environmental conditions rather than denitrifier abundance and diversity drive potential denitrification after changes in land uses

Land-use practices aiming at increasing agro-ecosystem sustainability, e.g. no-till systems and use of temporary grasslands, have been developed in cropping areas, but their environmental benefits could be counterbalanced by increased N2O emissions produced, in particular during denitrification. Modelling denitrification in this context is thus of major importance. However, to what extent can changes in denitrification be predicted by representing the denitrifying community as a black box, i.e. without an adequate representation of the biological characteristics (abundance and composition) of this community, remains unclear. We analysed the effect of changes in land uses on denitrifiers for…