Monday, November 13, 2006
89-12

Subsurface Drip Irrigation, Strip Tillage and Cover Crops in Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

Zahangir Kabir1, Cynthia Kallenbach1, William Horwath1, Dennis Rolston2, and Jefferey Mitchell1. (1) Univ of California at Davis, Dept of Land, Air and Water Resources, One Shields Ave, Davis, CA 95616, (2) Univ of California at Davis, Dept of Land, Air and Water Resources, One Shields Ave, Davis, CA 95616

Carbon dioxide (CO2) and Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from agricultural soils are a significant contribution to global greenhouse gases.  Alternative agriculture management strategies, such as subsurface drip irrigation, reduced tillage and winter cover cropping have the potential to reduce both soil CO2 and N2O emissions.  A field trial in California, planted in processing tomatoes, was used to compare combinations of subsurface drip irrigation (SDI), strip tillage (ST), and winter cover crop (CC) to furrow irrigation (FI), conventional tillage (CT) and no cover crop (NCC) to evaluate system differences in CO2 and N2O emissions.  CO2 and N2O fluxes were measured throughout the growing season every 14 days and during the off-season every three weeks. Overall, total seasonal CO2 flux was lower in the SDI treatments than in the FI treatments in the growing season.  During the winter season (October, 2005 to January 2006) no significant difference in total CO2 flux was found between irrigation treatments.  Annually, the SDI treatments had an emission rate 4% lower than that of FI treatments.  CO2 flux in both SDI and FI increased following an irrigation event, as did soil moisture.  Preliminary N2O results show that SDI had lower total N2O emissions compared to FI during the growing season. The N2O flux in the FI treatments was highest (813.60 ųg m-2 h-1) in the furrow and remained high at the edge of the bed but was drastically reduced in the plant line (65.13 ųg m-2 h-1).  In contrast, the SDI generally had higher N2O emissions in the plant line (24.26 ųg m-2 h-1) than in the edge of the bed and in the furrow (4.87 ųg m-2 h-1). There was no significant treatment effect on N2O during the winter season.