NO and N2O emissions from agricultural fields in the North China Plain: Origination and mitigation

Agricultural soil has been recognized as a major source of atmospheric NO and N2O emissions which have important impacts on regional and global environments. Here we comparably investigated the effects of ammonium, nitrate fertilizers and nitrification inhibitor dicyandiamide (DCD) addition on NO and N2O emissions from the agricultural soil in the North China Plain (NCP). Compared with the ammonium fertilizer application, the reductions of NO emissions caused by nitrate fertilizer and DCD addition were 100% and 93%, and of N2O emissions were 54% and 74%, respectively. Remarkable reductions of NO and N2O emissions were also observed from five different agricultural soils in the NCP by replacing ammonium with nitrate fertilizer, indicating that nitrification is the predominant process for the emissions of NO and N2O from the soils in the vast area of NCP. NO emission peaks were found to be several days later than N2O peaks after the application of ammonium fertilizer and flooding irrigation, implying that most of NO initially produced via nitrification process might be fast reduced to N2O under the high soil moisture condition. Interestingly, the relative contribution of denitrification to N2O emission showed obviously time-dependent, e.g., evident N2O emission caused by the application of nitrate was only observed after the basal fertilization for the maize and the topdressing for the wheat. Replacing ammonium with nitrate fertilizer and mixing with the nitrification inhibitor are verified to be effective measures for mitigating NO and N2O emissions from arable soils in the NCP.