Ecosystem Carbon and Energy Exchange From Agricultural Soils in the Humid Region of Alabama.

Abstract Alabama is a state rich in agricultural resources, many of which provide vital service and products to its citizens. It is the major economic and social activity and it provides a wide range of ecosystem services. Most of Alabama's agriculture and cropping systems are under wide varieties of management practices (e.g., crop, water usage, soil practices) and these practices are sensitive to climate variability. It has been suggested there are potential ways to altering soil carbon which can be used to potentially increase the accumulation of C into the soils. Our research objective is to quantify annual amounts of Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE) of C and energy at the ecosystem crop-level, employing EC flux systems. Our existing study at AAMU-Winfred Thomas Agricultural Research, WTARS site focused on carbon, water and energy exchanges measured intensively among time-scales from 30-min to interannual over minimum-till agriculture practices. Since 2006, NRES's faculty and graduate students have been engaged in conducting long term studies and measurements designed to understand the carbon and energy balance of north Alabama farm lands under various management practices. The team of scientists and students in the NRES is providing important educational outdoor facilities to monitor greenhouse gases and energy balances under different land use and cover types. Efforts are ongoing to improve ecosystem-atmosphere estimates of CO2 and CO emissions from agricultural (both intensive and conservative farming systems) using a micrometeorological techniques. The future plan is to scale these plot level estimates into inventory-based estimates and develop maps of agricultural, forest and urban land use soil CO2 emission map at high spatiotemporal resolution level. Graduate and undergraduate students are currently actively participated in our research and gained hands-on training to investigate the impact of green house gases and energy balances on climate change at the ecosystem level.