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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2019

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Abstract

Climate change has altered global precipitation patterns and has led to greater variation in hydrological conditions. Wetlands are important globally for their soil carbon storage. Given that wetland carbon processes are primarily driven by hydrology, a comprehensive understanding of the effect of inundation is needed. In this study, we evaluated the effect of water level (WL) and inundation duration (ID) on carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes by analysing a 10‐year (2008–2017) eddy covariance dataset from a seasonally inundated freshwater marl prairie in the Everglades National Park. Both gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER) rates showed declines under inundation. While GPP rates decreased almost linearly as WL and ID increased, ER rates were less responsive to WL increase beyond 30 cm and extended inundation periods. The unequal responses between GPP and ER caused a weaker net ecosystem CO2 sink strength as inundation intensity increased. Eventually, the ecosystem tended to become a net CO2 source on a daily basis when either WL exceeded 46 cm or inundation lasted longer than 7 months. Particularly, with an extended period of high‐WLs in 2016 (i.e., WL remained >40 cm for >9 months), the ecosystem became a CO2 source, as opposed to being a sink or neutral for CO2 in other years. Furthermore, the extreme inundation in 2016 was followed by a 4‐month postinundation period with lower net ecosystem CO2 uptake compared to other years. Given that inundation plays a key role in controlling ecosystem CO2 balance, we suggest that a future with more intensive inundation caused by climate change or water management activities can weaken the CO2 sink strength of the Everglades freshwater marl prairies and similar wetlands globally, creating a positive feedback to climate change.

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Abstract

Liming of acidic soils has been suggested as a strategy to enhance N2O reduction to N2 during heterotrophic denitrification, and mitigate N2O emission from N fertilised soils. However, the mechanisms involved and possible interactions of key soil parameters (NO3− and O2) still need to be clarified. To explore to what extent soil pH controls N2O emissions and the associated N2O/(N2O + N2) product ratio in an acidic sandy soil, we set-up three sequential incubation experiments using an unlimed control (pH 4.1) and a limed soil (pH 6.9) collected from a 50-year liming experiment. Interactions between different NO3− concentrations, N forms (ammonium- and nitrate) and oxygen levels (oxic and anoxic) on the liming effect of N2O emission and reduction were tested in these two sandy soils via direct N2 and N2O measurements. Our results showed 50-year liming caused a significant increase in denitrification and soil respiration rate of the acidic sandy soil. High concentrations of NO3− in soil (>10 mM N in soil solution, equivalent to 44.9 mg N kg−1 soil) almost completely inhibited N2O reduction to N2 (>90%) regardless of the soil pH value. With decreasing NO3− application rate, N2O reduction rate increased in both soils with the effect being more pronounced in the limed soil. Complete N2O reduction to N2 in the low pH sandy soil was also observed when soil NO3− concentration decreased below 0.2 mM NO3−. Furthermore, liming evidently increased both N2O emissions and the N2O/(N2+N2O) product ratio under oxic conditions when supplied with ammonium-based fertiliser, possibly due to the coupled impact of stimulated nitrification and denitrification. Overall, our data suggest that long-term liming has the potential to both increase and decrease N2O emissions, depending on the soil NO3− level, with high soil NO3− levels overriding the assumed direct pH effect on N2O/(N2+N2O) product ratio.

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Abstract

Mediterranean climate areas are home to highly relevant and distinctive agro-ecosystems, where sustainability is threatened by water scarcity and continuous loss of soil organic carbon. In these systems, recycling strategies to close the loop between crop production (and agrorelated industries) and soil conservation are of special interest in the current context of climate change mitigation. Pyrolysis represents a recycling option for the production of energy and biochar, a carbonaceous product with a wide range of environmental and agronomic applications. Considering that biochar functionality depends on both the original biomass and the pyrolysis conditions, we produced and characterized 22 biochars in order to evaluate their potential to sequester C and modify soil physicochemical properties. The pore size distribution was a function of the original biomass and did not change with the temperature of pyrolysis. The highest number of pores within the size 0.2−30 μm, relevant for plant available water retention, was reached at 600 °C. However, ideal pyrolysis conditions to optimize C stability and hydrologic properties was reached at 400 °C in woody derived biochars, as higher temperatures lead to a nontransient hydrophobicity. This study highlights relevant physicochemical properties of locally derived biochars that can be used to tackle specific challenges in Mediterranean agroecosystems.

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Abstract

There is growing international interest in better managing soils to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) content to contribute to climate change mitigation, to enhance resilience to climate change and to underpin food security, through initiatives such as international ‘4p1000’ initiative and the FAO's Global assessment of SOC sequestration potential (GSOCseq) programme. Since SOC content of soils cannot be easily measured, a key barrier to implementing programmes to increase SOC at large scale, is the need for credible and reliable measurement/monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) platforms, both for national reporting and for emissions trading. Without such platforms, investments could be considered risky. In this paper, we review methods and challenges of measuring SOC change directly in soils, before examining some recent novel developments that show promise for quantifying SOC. We describe how repeat soil surveys are used to estimate changes in SOC over time, and how long‐term experiments and space‐for‐time substitution sites can serve as sources of knowledge and can be used to test models, and as potential benchmark sites in global frameworks to estimate SOC change. We briefly consider models that can be used to simulate and project change in SOC and examine the MRV platforms for SOC change already in use in various countries/regions. In the final section, we bring together the various components described in this review, to describe a new vision for a global framework for MRV of SOC change, to support national and international initiatives seeking to effect change in the way we manage our soils.