Abstract:Soil ammonia volatilization (AV) is an important pathway for nitrogen (N) loss from fertilizer. AV is greatly affected by meteorological variable, soil property, N fertilizer, amount of N, and soil water condition. However little information is available on AV with different total contents of soil soluble salts in western China. Saline soil is an important soil resource in arid and semi arid areas. Saline-alkali soil in China covers an area of 3.69 million hectares, and potential salt affected soil occupies an area of 1.7 million hectares. The accumulative amounts and dynamical characteristics of AV from Urea (0.8 and 2.0 g/pot) (UR) and Urea phosphate (1.0, 2.0 and 4.0 g/pot) (UP) in the soils under six different salinity levels (1.7, 9.9, 16.4, 23.2, 29.1, 37.9 g/kg ) were investigated using a method of phosphoric acid and glycerol-sponge venting chamber. The main results are as follows: (1) The amount of AV of UR and UP increased with the increase of total salt content in soil within a limited range (1.7-37.9 g/kg). When the fertilizer treatments were same, the amount of AV in Non-saline soil was significantly smaller than in heavy salinity soil. When the salinity concentrations was 37.9 g/kg, the accumulative amounts of AV from UR2 was 37.6 mg N/kg, while it was 3.3 mg N/kg in soil at salinity level of 1.7 g/kg. The former was 11.4 times higher than the latter. (2) The coefficient a of binomial formula was negative, which suggested the rates of AV from UR and UP decreased with time in different salty soils. The slope of linear function and Elovich Equation increased as the salinity concentrations increased, suggesting that the rates of AV from UR and UP increased with soil salinization. (3) The correlation between the amounts of AV and the soil salinity fitted well the logistic equation(P<0.01). The resulting curve was described as an S curve. These results indicated that AV rates from soil were greatly affected by soil total soluble salt content. Under the same amount of nitrogen application and total content of soil soluble salts, AV losses from Urea phosphate were much lower than that of Urea.