Soil Biogeochemical Cycles and Their Influence on Crop-Environment Dynamics in Changing Climates

Abstract

Soil biogeochemical cycles regulate nutrient availability, soil organic matter dynamics, greenhouse-gas exchange, and crop productivity, but their functioning is increasingly modified by climate change. This review synthesizes the major processes controlling carbon (C), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), sulfur (S), and silicon (Si) cycling in agricultural soils and examines how these interconnected cycles influence soil-crop-environment relationships under changing climatic conditions. Warming, drought, excessive soil moisture, altered precipitation, and elevated atmospheric CO2 can modify microbial activity, organic-matter turnover, nutrient mineralization and immobilization, redox conditions, nutrient losses, and greenhouse-gas emissions. Their effects are strongly context dependent and vary with soil texture, pH, organic-matter content, drainage, microbial communities, crop type, and management. The review further evaluates how plant nutrient acquisition, rhizosphere processes, and plant-soil-microbial feedbacks connect biogeochemical cycling with crop performance and environmental outcomes. Conservation agriculture, organic amendments, biochar, and microbial inoculants may improve nutrient retention and soil resilience, but their effectiveness depends on soil, climate, amendment properties, and management history and may involve agronomic or environmental trade-offs. We identify major knowledge gaps concerning interactions among elemental cycles, responses to compound climate extremes, microbial regulation of nutrient transformations, and the transferability of management practices across agroecosystems. Integrating long-term field experiments, process-based modelling, molecular approaches, and high-resolution soil monitoring will be essential for developing climate-resilient nutrient-management strategies.