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. 2016 Nov 1:235:229-241.
doi: 10.1016/j.agee.2016.10.025.

Effect of the application of cattle urine with or without the nitrification inhibitor DCD, and dung on greenhouse gas emissions from a UK grassland soil

L M Cardenas  1 , T M Misselbrook  1 , C Hodgson  1 , N Donovan  1 , S Gilhespy  1 , K A Smith  2 , M S Dhanoa  1 , D Chadwick  3
Affiliations

Effect of the application of cattle urine with or without the nitrification inhibitor DCD, and dung on greenhouse gas emissions from a UK grassland soil

L M Cardenas et al. Agric Ecosyst Environ. .

Abstract

Emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) from soils from grazed grasslands have large uncertainty due to the great spatial variability of excreta deposition, resulting in heterogeneous distribution of nutrients. The contribution of urine to the labile N pool, much larger than that from dung, is likely to be a major source of emissions so efforts to determine N2O emission factors (EFs) from urine and dung deposition are required to improve the inventory of greenhouse gases from agriculture. We investigated the effect of the application of cattle urine and dung at different times of the grazing season on N2O emissions from a grassland clay loam soil. Methane emissions were also quantified. We assessed the effect of a nitrification inhibitor, dicyandiamide (DCD), on N2O emissions from urine application and also included an artificial urine treatment. There were significant differences in N2O EFs between treatments in the spring (largest from urine and lowest from dung) but not in the summer and autumn applications. We also found that there was a significant effect of season (largest in spring) but not of treatment on the N2O EFs. The resulting EF values were 2.96, 0.56 and 0.11% of applied N for urine for spring, summer and autumn applications, respectively. The N2O EF values for dung were 0.14, 0.39 and 0.10% for spring, summer and autumn applications, respectively. The inhibitor was effective in reducing N2O emissions for the spring application only. Methane emissions were larger from the dung application but there were no significant differences between treatments across season of application.

Keywords: DCD; Dicyandiamide; Dung; Meta-analysis; Nitrous oxide; Urine.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Long term average temperature and rainfall [1982–2011].
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Mean daily air temperature and rainfall for Beacon Field. The arrows denote the time of urine and dung applications for each of the 3 experiments (15/5/12, 3/7/12 and 25/9/12 for spring, summer and autumn applications, respectively).
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Daily N2O fluxes for the 2 experiments. a. Spring application; b. Summer application; c. Autumn application. (Note different y-axis scales).
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Cumulative CH4 emissions for the 3 experiments (bars are standard errors of the means).
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Soil moisture expressed as WFPS for the 3 experiments (bars are the standard error of the means).
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Soil NH4+-N for the a. spring, b. summer and c. autumn experiments.
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Soil NO3−-N for the a. spring, b. summer and c. autumn experiments.
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
Annual yield for 2 cuts for all treatments for the spring and summer experiments (the autumn experiment is excluded from the graph as there was only one cut) (bars are standard errors of the means).
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References

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