“…This is, in part, because some approaches for apportioning N 2 O production between nitrification and denitrification rely on chemical inhibitors or isotope labeling approaches. The former inherently alters soil conditions and microbial activity while the latter frequently requires the incubation of soil samples rather than in situ experimentation [Bateman and Baggs, 2005;Tiedje et al, 1989;Wrage et al, 2005]. Alternative approaches for evaluating the relative proportion of N 2 O emitted from nitrification and denitrification which solely rely on bulk d 15 N and d 18 O analysis of N 2 O evolving from soils avoid biases imposed by inhibitors [Bol et al, 2003[Bol et al, , 2004Mandernack et al, 2000;Perez et al, 2000Perez et al, , 2001Tilsner et al, 2003;Webster and Hopkins, 1996;Wrage et al, 2004a;Yamulki et al, 2000Yamulki et al, , 2001.…”