New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research abstracts

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Short-term effects of sheep excrement on carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane fluxes in typical grassland of Inner Mongolia

Xiuzhi Ma^1,2,3
Shiping Wang^2*
Yanfen Wang³
Gaoming Jiang¹
Paul Nyren⁴

¹Laboratory of Quantitative Vegetation Ecology
Institute of Botany
The Chinese Academy of Sciences
Nanxincun 20, Xiangshan
Beijing 100093, China
luckmxy2001@yahoo.com.cn
jgm@ht.rol.cn.net

²Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology
The Chinese Academy of Sciences
59 Xiguan Street
Xining 810008, China
wangship@yahoo.com

³Graduate University of The Chinese Academy of Sciences
Beijing 100039, China
yfwang@gucas.ac.cn

⁴Central Grassland Research Extension Station
North Dakota State University
4824 48th Ave SE
Streeter, ND 58483, USA
grassland@ndsuext.nodak.edu

^*Author for correspondence.

Abstract  Excrement patches of grazing animals play an important role in greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes due to the high nitrogen (N) and available carbon (C) deposited in small areas, but little information is available for the effect of excrement in the Inner Mongolian grassland (43°26′N, 116°40′E). To elucidate the effect of grazing sheep urine, fresh dung and compost on fluxes of methane (CH₄), carbon dioxide (CO₂), and nitrous oxide (N₂O), a short-term field study (65 days) was carried out in the typical grassland of Inner Mongolia with the optimised closed chamber/GC technique. Compared with the control, cumulative net CH₄ consumption decreased 36, 31, and 18% from urine, fresh dung, and compost plots, respectively; net CO₂-C output increased by 6.5, 1.5, and 1.2% from urine, fresh dung, and compost treated soil, respectively; about three times as much N₂O-N was emitted from urine and the fresh dung treatments during 65 days. Nitrous oxide emission was positively correlated with CO₂ emission (R = 0.691, P < 0.01) and water-filled pore space (R = 0.698, P < 0.01). The percentages of N₂O-N loss of applied-N were 0.44 and 1.05% for urine and fresh dung, respectively. Our results suggest that in autumn in the degraded grassland of Inner Mongolia, the effect of sheep excrement may be ignored when evaluating the total GHG emissions.

Keywords  carbon dioxide; methane; nitrous oxide; sheep excrement; Inner Mongolian steppe

A05074; Received 19 December 2005; accepted 6 April 2006; Online publication date 10 July 2006
New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 2006, Vol. 49: 285–297
0028–8233/06/4903–0285 © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2006

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