A five-year study of the impact of nitrogen addition on methane uptake in alpine grassland

It remains unclear how nitrogen (N) deposition affects soil methane (CH4) uptake in semiarid and arid zones. An in situ field experiment was conducted from 2010 to 2014 to systematically study the effect of various N application rates (0, 10, 30 and 90 kg N ha−1 yr−1) on CH4 flux in alpine grassland in the Tianshan Mountains. No significant influence of N addition on CH4 uptake was found. Initially the CH4 uptake rate increased with increasing N application rate by up to 11.5% in 2011 and then there was gradual inhibition by 2014. However, the between-year variability in CH4 uptake was very highly significant with average uptake ranging from 52.9 to 106.6 μg C m−2 h−1 and the rate depended largely on seasonal variability in precipitation and temperature. CH4 uptake was positively correlated with soil temperature, air temperature and to a lesser extent with precipitation and was negatively correlated with soil moisture and NO3−-N content. The results indicate that between-year variability in CH4 uptake was impacted by precipitation and temperature and was not sensitive to elevated N deposition in alpine grassland.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Scientific Reports

• Publication date

  2016-08-30

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Chemistry, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/srep32064PMID 27571892PMCID 5004186
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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