Carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide fluxes from the soil are measured year-round in order to determine how a diversified crop rotation and winter warming alters the exchange of greenhouse gases (GHG’s) between the soil ecosystem and the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide emissions are specifically measured here to determine if a decrease in nitrogen leaching from diversified cropping systems results in increased GHG’s emissions. Information on the emissions of both GHGs will be used to determine agricultural sources and sinks of GHG’s from these cropping rotations.
University of British Columbia Biomet CH-V5 Automatic Chambers are installed on the surface of each of the lysimeters to measure surface CO2 and N2O fluxes. Three chambers (one per group of 6 lysimeters) are sampled at the same time for 20 minutes each so that emissions from each soil core is sampled every two hours. The concentration of N2O and CO2 in the sampled air is measured in real time by a Campbell Scientific TGA200A.
Follow this link to access the complete lysimeter data set.