Nitrous oxide emission from soils amended with crop residues

Crop residues incorporated in soil are a potentially important source of nitrous oxide (N₂O), though poorly quantified. Here, we report on the N₂O emission from 10 crop residues added to a sandy and a clay soil, both with and without additional nitrate (NO₃). In the sandy soil, total N₂O emission from wheat, maize, and barley residues was not significantly different from the control. The total N₂O emission from white cabbage, Brussels sprouts, mustard, sugar beet residues and broccoli ranged from 0.13 to 14.6 % of the amount of N added as residue and were higher with additional NO₃ than without additional NO₃. In the clay soil, similar effects of crop residues were found, but the magnitude of the N₂O emission was much smaller than that in the sandy soil: less than 1 % of the residue N evolved as N₂O. The C-to-N ratio of the residue accounted for only 22–34% and the mineralizable N content of the residue for 18–74% of the variance in N₂O emission. We suggest that the current IPCC methodology for estimating N₂O emission from crop residues may be considerably improved by defining crop specific emission factors instead of one emission factor for all crop residues. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.