Editorial: Nitrogen dynamics and load in soils

Among the chemical elements, nitrogen is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, making up approximately 78.1% of the atmosphere. It is also an essential nutrient for life, and it can take many chemical forms in soil. The reactions making possible the transformations among these forms are mainly driven by soil microorganisms. Several nitrogen-containing compounds are also toxic. Soil microbial reactions involving nitrogen, therefore, have the potential to affect human and environmental health, sometimes spatially and temporally far from the microorganisms that originally performed the transformation. During the last decades, anthropogenic activities have also seriously impacted the global biogeochemical nitrogen cycle.