Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Nitrous Oxide and Methane Emissions from Grazed Pasture.

Curtis Dell, Howard Skinner, Paul Adler, and John Schmidt. USDA/ARS/PSWMRU Building 3702, Curtin Road, University Park, PA 16802

The contribution of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) to the atmosphere from grazed pastures in the eastern U.S. is not well known.   Small, vented chambers have been deployed periodically since May 2005 in a rotationally-grazed pasture in central Pennsylvania.  Since locations in pastures where livestock urine and dung are deposited are believed to contribute greatly to emissions from pasture, those sources were measured separately from locations with no evidence of fresh waste deposition.  Nitrous oxide emissions have been greatly influenced by soil moisture. When soil is dry to moderately moist, mean N2O emissions from locations that have not received waste are generally less than 10 g ha-1d-1.  However, mean emissions as high as 200 g N2O ha-1d-1 have been observed after large rainfall events.  Elevated N2O emissions were consistently observed from sampling points at dung piles and urine spots within 10 days after grazing with peak emission rates up to approximately 1000 and 500 g N2O ha-1d-1 from urine patches and dung piles, respectively.  Soil moisture also greatly influenced the amount and duration of emissions from dung piles and urine patches.  On average, we estimate that emissions in response to fresh waste inputs contribute 10 to 20% of the total N2O emission from the pasture. Methane emissions were observed only from freshly deposited dung and diminished quickly as dung dried.  Soils without fresh dung deposits were a small sink for CH4, and the size of that sink was comparable to the quantity of methane emitted from dung. Given the complex interaction between N2O emission rates and soil moisture and the influence of other factors (such as soil temperature, fertilizer addition, stocking rates, and plant species composition), a modeling approach is likely needed to estimate emission from intensively grazed systems.