Nitrous oxide concentration and flux in Min River Basin of southeast China: Effects of land use, stream order and water variables

Abstract

Estimates of riverine nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions have great uncertainty partly due to the fact that the data is still sparse for stream sizes and land uses. Here we determined water dissolved N2O concentration and water–air interface N2O flux across the land uses and stream orders in Min River Basin of southeast China. N2O concentrations ranged from 11.1 to 27.4 nmol/L, increasing from first- to eighth-order rivers. The first- and second-order streams showed negative N2O flux (−0.33 and −0.05 µg m−2h−1, respectively) compared to third- to eighth-order rivers (from 0.29 to 2.85 µg m−2h−1). Average N2O flux was significantly higher in urban (1.60 µg m−2h−1) and cropland rivers (0.89 µg m−2h−1) than in forest rivers (−0.47 µg m−2h−1), which could be due to the main effect of land use was on the nitrogen load. Indirect N2O emission factor varied between 0.035 and 0.14 % across the rivers, which decreased from the urban to forest rivers and were lower than the IPCC default value (0.26 %). N2O concentration and flux were positively correlated with NO3−, NH4+, depth, velocity and temperature, suggesting the importance of stream surface hydromoprhology to N2O emissions. Land use indirectly affected N2O flux by affecting water NO3−, NH4+, DO, DOC, pH and temperature, which could further explain the land use dependence of N2O emissions on water variables. High DOC:NO3− ratio (>6) was the main factor of N2O sink in the small streams, which may be due to the enhanced N2O consumption and low N2O production. Therefore, riverine N2O emissions are highly variable across stream sizes and land uses, which are not only increased by inorganic nitrogen load and are also dependent on stream hydraulics and morphology.