Nitrous oxide emissions from soils: ‘from the bottle to the model’

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, we have been carrying out experiments on N2O production, emission and sorption from a variety of soils and ecosystems. These laboratory studies revealed insights on the complex process of N2O formation in soils under contrasting conditions. Within Belgium, we also carried out numerous field experiments to measure in situ N2O emissions, using the closed chamber technique. The latter allowed us to suggest a region-specific N2O-N emission factor (2.66% of the applied N) for direct soil emissions and to assess the spatial and temporal variability of N2O emissions. Recently, we have been using these N2O field emission data to validate an adapted version of the DNDC process-based model to predict direct N2O emissions from agricultural soils of the Flemish region. Ultimately, it is our aim to develop, based on this validated DNDC model, scenario analyses of future direct N2O emissions from agricultural soils.