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Nitrous oxide emission from an agricultural field fertilized with liquid lagoonal swine effluent
Author(s) -
Whalen S. C.,
Phillips R. L.,
Fischer E. N.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
global biogeochemical cycles
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.512
H-Index - 187
eISSN - 1944-9224
pISSN - 0886-6236
DOI - 10.1029/1999gb900093
Subject(s) - nitrous oxide , nitrification , denitrification , effluent , fertilizer , environmental chemistry , mineralization (soil science) , soil water , environmental science , cycling , chemistry , agronomy , nitrogen , environmental engineering , soil science , biology , history , organic chemistry , archaeology
Contemporary agriculture is characterized by the intensive production of livestock in confined facilities and land application of stored waste as an organic fertilizer. Emission of nitrous oxide (N 2 O) from receiving soils is an important but poorly constrained term in the atmospheric N 2 O budget. In particular, there are few data for N 2 O emissions from spray fields associated with industrial scale swine production facilities that have rapidly expanded in the southeastern United States. In an intensive, 24‐day investigation over three spray cycles, we followed the time course for changes in N 2 O emission and soil physicochemical variables in an agricultural field irrigated with liquid lagoonal swine effluent. The total N (535 mg L −1 ) of the liquid waste was almost entirely NH 4 + −N (>90%) and thus had a low mineralization potential. Soil profiles for nitrification and denitrification indicated that >90% of potential activity was localized in the surface 20 cm. Application of this liquid fertilizer to warm (19° to 28°C) soils in a form that is both readily volatilized and immediately utilizable by the endogenous N‐cycling microbial community resulted in a sharp decline in soil NH 4 + −N and supported a rapid but short‐lived (i.e., days) burst of nitrification, denitrification, and N 2 O emission. Nitrous oxide fluxes as high as 9200 μg N 2 O−N m −2 h −1 were observed shortly after fertilization, but emissions decreased to prefertilization levels within a few days. Poor correlations between N 2 O efflux and soil physicochemical variables (temperature, moisture, NO 3 − −N, NH 4 + −N) and fertilizer loading rate point to the complexity of interacting factors affecting N 2 O production and emission. Total fertilizer N applied and N 2 O−N emitted were 29.7 g m −2 (297 kg N ha −1 ) and 395 mg m −2 , respectively. The fractional loss of applied N to N 2 O (corrected for background emission) was 1.4%, in agreement with the mean of 1.25% reported for mineral fertilizers. The direct effects of fertilizer application appear to be more immediate and short‐lived for liquid swine waste than for manures and slurries, which have a slower release of nitrogenous nutrients.