Phosphorus is one of the major limiting factors of primary productivity in terrestrial ecosystems and, thus, the P demand of plants might be among the most important drivers of soil and ecosystem development. The P cycling in forest ecosystems seems an ideal example to illustrate the concept of ecosystem nutrition. Ecosystem nutrition combines and extents the traditional concepts of nutrient cycling and ecosystem ecology. The major extension is to consider also the loading and unloading of nutrient cycles and the impact of nutrient acquiring and recycling processes on overall ecosystem properties. Ecosystem nutrition aims to integrate nutrient related aspects at different scales and in different ecosystem compartments including all processes, interactions and feedbacks associated with the nutrition of an ecosystem. We review numerous previous studies dealing with P nutrition from this ecosystem nutrition perspective. The available information contributes to the description of basic ecosystem characteristics such as emergence, hierarchy, and robustness. In result, we were able to refine Odum's hypothesis on P nutrition strategies along ecosystem succession to substrate related ecosystem nutrition and development. We hypothesize that at sites rich in mineral-bound P, plant and microbial communities tend to introduce P from primary minerals into the biogeochemical P cycle (acquiring systems), and hence the tightness of the P cycle is of minor relevance for ecosystem functioning. In contrast, tight P recycling is a crucial emergent property of forest ecosystems established at sites poor in mineral bound P (recycling systems). We conclude that the integration of knowledge on nutrient cycling, soil science, and ecosystem ecology into holistic ecosystem nutrition will provide an entirely new view on soil-plant-microbe interactions.

The National Forest Soil Inventory (NFSI) provides the Greenhouse Gas Reporting in Germany with a quantitative assessment of organic carbon (C) stocks and changes in forest soils. Carbon stocks of the organic layer and the mineral topsoil (30 cm) were estimated on the basis of ca. 1.800 plots sampled from 1987 to 1992 and resampled from 2006 to 2008 on a nationwide grid of 8 × 8 km. Organic layer C stock estimates were attributed to surveyed forest stands and CORINE land cover data. Mineral soil C stock estimates were linked with the distribution of dominant soil types according to the Soil Map of Germany (1 : 1 000 000) and subsequently related to the forest area. It appears that the C pool of the organic layer was largely depending on tree species and parent material, whereas the C pool of the mineral soil varied among soil groups. We identified the organic layer C pool as stable although C was significantly sequestered under coniferous forest at lowland sites. The mineral soils, however, sequestered 0.41 Mg C ha−1 yr−1. Carbon pool changes were supposed to depend on stand age and forest transformation as well as an enhanced biomass input. Carbon stock changes were clearly attributed to parent material and soil groups as sandy soils sequestered higher amounts of C, whereas clayey and calcareous soils showed small gains and in some cases even losses of soil C. We further showed that the largest part of the overall sample variance was not explained by fine-earth stock variances, rather by the C concentrations variance. The applied uncertainty analyses in this study link the variability of strata with measurement errors. In accordance to other studies for Central Europe, the results showed that the applied method enabled a reliable nationwide quantification of the soil C pool development for a certain period.

In this study, the supply and input-output balances of phosphorus (P) were investigated for a 10-yearperiod at 85 long-term monitoring sites in German forest ecosystems under the European Level II programme. These sites encompass 23 European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) stands, 9 oak stands comprised of common oak (Quercus robur L.) and/or sessile oak (Quercus petraea Liebl.), 20 Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) and 33 Norway spruce (Picea abies H.Karst.) stands. We quantified P concentrations in needles and leaves, P inputs from the atmosphere, P outputs through leaching and harvesting, and total P in the soil and humus layers. The P concentrations in European beech leaves from two sites ([1 mg P g -1 dry weight), and in Norway spruce needles from four sites ([1.2 mg P g -1 dry weight), were deficient over several years. In contrast, the oak and Scots pine sites were well supplied with P. When P removal through harvesting was disregarded, P balances were positive or stable (median 0.21 kg P ha -1 a -1 ). With harvesting, balances were mostly negative (median -0.35 kg P ha -1 a -1 ), with longterm P removal from the forest ecosystems.

Close to one third of Germany is forested. Forests are able to store significant quantities of carbon (C) in the biomass and in the soil. Coordinated by the Thünen Institute, the German National Forest Inventory (NFI) and the National Forest Soil Inventory (NFSI) have generated data to estimate the carbon storage capacity of forests. The second NFI started in 2002 and had been repeated in 2012. The reporting time for the NFSI was 1990 to 2006. Living forest biomass, deadwood, litter and soils up to a depth of 90 cm have stored 2500 t of carbon within the reporting time. Over all 224 t C ha -1 in aboveground and belowground biomass, deadwood and soil are stored in forests. Specifically, 46% stored in above-ground and below-ground biomass, 1% in dead wood and 53% in the organic layer together with soil up to 90 cm. Carbon stocks in mineral soils up to 30 cm mineral soil increase about 0.4 t C ha -1 yr -1 stocks between the inventories while the carbon pool in the organic layers declined slightly. In the living biomass carbon stocks increased about 1.0 t C ha -1 yr -1. In Germany, approximately 58 mill. tonnes of CO 2 were sequestered in 2012 (NIR 2017).

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