Agriculture transforms the environment. The simplification of agroecosystems structure increases the hazards of leaching, wind and water erosion, and volatilization of chemicals from soil. Soil nitrogen is of interest as a major crop nutrient, but also as a potential environmental pollutant. Knowledge about the behavior of soil nitrogen is desirable in order to optimize plant growth and crop yield and to minimize environmental side effects. This book also gives information about the function of biogeochemical barriers in the form of shelterbelts, which efficiently decrease the concentrations of various forms of nitrogen in ground water.
About the Author: Lech Wojciech Szajdak, Professor of Agronomy since 2006, is currently the Director of the Institute for Agricultural and Forest Environment, Polish Academy of Sciences, in Poznań, Poland. He obtained his M.Sc. (Pharmacy) and Ph.D. in 1977 and 1986, respectively, from Poznań University of Medical Sciences. In 2009 he was awarded a Honoris Causa degree from Estonia University of Life Sciences, Tartu. In 2017 he was awarded a Foreign Honorary Member of the Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences "Gheorghe Ionescu-Şişeşti", Romania.
His professional interests are: a) free and bounded amino acids, phenolic acids, auxins, humic and fulvic acids, transient radicals, enzymes in soils under crop rotation and the continuous cropping of rye, conventional and no-tillage, fertilized with different mineral and organic fertilizers; b) soil enzymes involved in the nitrogen cycle; c) chemical and biochemical processes and mechanisms in organic soils (peat, moorsh, sapropel) and peatlands in agriculture and the impact of secondary transformed peat soils on the content and properties of hydrophilic and hydrophobic organic compounds of well-known and unknown structure; d) substrates for growing media, e) Function of biogeochemical barriers in agricultural landscape.
Prof. Szajdak has written more than 560 research papers, 21 books and 117 chapters in Monographs. He was the guest editor of two special issues of Agronomy Research and Plant and Soil "Restoration of Peatlands Soil for Agricultural Use" and "Processes, Mechanism and Use of Organic Soils". He has been a primary researcher in 19 scientific projects.
