J. For. Sci., X:X | DOI: 10.17221/61/2025-JFS

Progress and prospects in understanding the effects of forest management practices on soil nitrogen cyclingReview

Lili Liu ORCID...^1,2, Chenyi Yu ORCID...^1,2, Jiayi Yang ORCID...^1,2, Zijun Zhang ORCID...^1,2, Qingwei Guan^1,2

¹ College of Ecology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China

² Collaborative Innovation Center of Sustainable Forestry in Southern China, Nanjing, China

Soil nitrogen (N) cycling plays a pivotal role in forest ecosystem productivity and nutrient regulation. This review synthesises recent advances in understanding how forest management practices influence soil nitrogen cycling and highlights future research priorities for elucidating underlying mechanisms and optimising forest ecosystem functioning (Figure 1). Management interventions such as thinning, species composition adjustment, and understory vegetation control have been shown to affect N inputs and transformation pathways by modifying litter quality, microbial community structure, and N-cycling enzyme activities. However, current findings remain inconsistent, and mechanistic insights are still limited. Future research should focus on disentangling the multi-scale, multifactorial interactions through which forest management regulates soil N cycling. Integrative approaches that link molecular biology with ecosystem-level processes are needed to clarify the interplay among microbial dynamics, enzyme activity, root exudates, and soil physicochemical properties across spatial and temporal scales. In addition, research should explore how forest management affects community structure, litter inputs, soil aggregation, and subsurface biochemical processes to reveal the synergistic regulation of nitrogen cycling by biological, physical, and chemical drivers. Establishing long-term monitoring networks across a range of forest types and climatic regimes, combined with tools such as metagenomics, high-throughput sequencing, and stable isotope tracing, will enable the precise characterisation of key nitrogen-cycling genes and fluxes. In the context of global environmental change, it is also crucial to assess how forest management modulates the coupling of nitrogen, carbon, and water cycles and the resultant ecological feedbacks.

Keywords: fertilisation; fire; rotation periods; soil microbial communities; structure and composition

Received: July 28, 2025; Revised: August 29, 2025; Accepted: August 29, 2025; Prepublished online: October 9, 2025