Research Projects

Agricultural soils are important sources of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4), both of which are potent GHGs that cause global warming. Because formations of N2O and CH4 in soil are microbe driven processes, affected by numerous environmental factors, the emission fluxes of these gases are extremely variable both spatially and temporally. Therefore, the traditional approach of using emission factors for soil emission estimate is limited and suffers from great uncertainty. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change has recommended alternative approaches such as process modeling as ways to improve the emission estimation. This project is intended to simulate N2O and CH4 emissions from agricultural soils using geochemical modeling based on California specific soil, crop, meteorological, and management conditions. The outcome of this project is expected to improve the understanding of GHG emissions in agricultural soils and transfer to ARB the modeling technology and databases for future use in emission assessment.