Minnesota Ag Connection - Overcoming Obstacles to Measure Nitrous Oxide Emissions

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Overcoming Obstacles to Measure Nitrous Oxide Emissions
Minnesota Ag Connection - 09/25/2017

"Indirect" emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) represent a large and very uncertain component of the greenhouse gas budget of agricultural cropping systems, but quantifying and reducing indirect N2O emissions have proven to be very challenging.

The symposium, "How Can We Improve Our Estimates of Indirect N2O Emissions," planned at the Managing Global Resources for a Secure Future ASA, CSSA, SSSA International Annual Meeting in Tampa, Fla., will address this important topic. The symposium will be held Oct. 23. The meeting is sponsored by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America.

"Indirect nitrous oxide emissions originate when other forms of reactive nitrogen, such as gaseous ammonia or dissolved nitrate, are transferred to nonagricultural landscapes or aquatic systems," says Rod Venterea, symposium organizer and a scientist at the University of Minnesota. "These different reactive nitrogen forms can all be converted to nitrous oxide within these external ecosystems, but the amounts that are converted to nitrous oxide in this way are very difficult to determine. This session will include several invited presentations that will address the latest approaches for more accurately assessing, via measurement and/or modeling, the magnitude and variation in indirect nitrous oxide emissions."

Speakers from the United States, Canada, and China will present to agronomists, crop scientists, and soil scientists.

For more information about the 2017 meeting, visit https://www.acsmeetings.org/.

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