Nitrogen fertilizer management for nitrous oxide (N2O) mitigation in intensive corn (Maize) production: an emissions reduction protocol for US Midwest agriculture
By N. Millar, G. Robertson, Peter R. Grace, R. Gehl, J. P. Hoben. 2010
275 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a major greenhouse gas (GHG) product of intensive agriculture. Fertilizer nitrogen (N) rate is the best single predictor of N2O emissions in row-crop agriculture in the US Midwest. We use this relationship to propose a transparent, scientifically robust protocol that can be utilized by developers of agricultural offset projects for generating fungible GHG emission reduction credits for the emerging US carbon cap and trade market. By coupling predicted N2O flux with the recently developed maximum return to N (MRTN) approach for determining economically profitable N input rates for optimized crop yield, we provide the basis for incentivizing N2O reductions without affecting yields. The protocol, if widely adopted, could reduce N2O from fertilized row-crop agriculture by more than 50%. Although other management and environmental factors can influence N2O emissions, fertilizer N rate can be viewed as a single unambiguous proxy—a transparent, tangible, and readily manageable commodity. Our protocol addresses baseline establishment, additionality, permanence, variability, and leakage, and provides for producers and other stakeholders the economic and environmental incentives necessary for adoption of agricultural N2O reduction offset projects.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Chemistry, Soil Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4d4ce76de98de9ee5aedb4eab5be9aec8668b8fc
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In Soil Science
Citations in the corpus
- Precision Agriculture Technologies positively contributing to GHG emissions mitigation, farm productivity and economics (2017, unknown): “Millar et al. (2010) [52] found that nitrogen fertilizer application rates correlate with N2O emissions.”
- Assessing internal crop nitrogen use efficiency in high-yielding irrigated cotton (2011, background): “Nitrous oxide (N2O), the most potent greenhouse gas, may be a small fraction of gases emitted from alkaline soils (Rochester 2003), but it is a dominant component of the total eCO2 emissions from fertilised cropping systems ( Millar et al. 2010 ).”
- Nitrogen footprints: past, present and future (2014, background): “Climate mitigation policy may impact such trends if specifically addressing N2O (see e.g. Millar et al 2010, or Oenema et al 2013).”