Gas pooling: A sampling technique to overcome spatial heterogeneity of soil carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide fluxes

Small-scale spatial variability in soil carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes poses serious challenges to the experimental design, and number of gas samples needed to provide a reliable estimate of flux usually exceeds analytical capacities. We pooled gas samples –analogously to soil p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Soil biology & biochemistry 2013-12, Vol.67, p.20-23
Main Authors: Arias-Navarro, Cristina, Díaz-Pinés, Eugenio, Kiese, Ralf, Rosenstock, Todd S., Rufino, Mariana C., Stern, David, Neufeldt, Henry, Verchot, Louis V., Butterbach-Bahl, Klaus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agronomy. Soil science and plant productions
Biochemistry and biology
Biological and medical sciences
Chemical, physicochemical, biochemical and biological properties
Composite sample
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Physics, chemistry, biochemistry and biology of agricultural and forest soils
Pooling technique
Soil CO2 and N2O fluxes
Soil science
Spatial variability
Static chamber
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Summary:Small-scale spatial variability in soil carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes poses serious challenges to the experimental design, and number of gas samples needed to provide a reliable estimate of flux usually exceeds analytical capacities. We pooled gas samples –analogously to soil pooling – to overcome this challenge. Our sample pooling technique collects a composite gas sample from several chambers instead of the conventional practise of analyzing samples from chambers individually, thus reducing numbers of gas samples. The method was verified to be reasonably accurate in forest, grassland and agricultural fields over a four week measurement campaign. Pooling technique results differed by 2–8% for CO2 and by 3–4% for N2O when compared to individual chamber means. That shows pooling of gas samples across individual static chambers is an acceptable approach to integrate spatial heterogeneity. •A gas pooling technique for soil CO2 and N2O fluxes estimation is presented.•Gas pooling technique allows for reduction of gas samples needed for analysis.•Tests in three ecosystems showed the reliability of the gas pooling technique.
ISSN:0038-0717
1879-3428
DOI:10.1016/j.soilbio.2013.08.011