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ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Soil and Water Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #334891
Title: Ratio of CO2 and O2 as index for categorizing soil biological activity in sugarcane areas under contrasting straw management regimes

Author
item ALMEIDA, RISELY - Sao Paulo State University (UNESP)
item DE BORTOLI TEIXEIRA, DANIEL - Collaborator
item MONTANARI, RAFAEL - Sao Paulo State University (UNESP)
item BOLONHEZI, ANTONIO - Sao Paulo State University (UNESP)
item TEIXEIRA, EDSON - Sao Paulo State University (UNESP)
item MOITINHO, MARA - Sao Paulo State University (UNESP)
item PANOSSO, ALAN - Sao Paulo State University (UNESP)
item Spokas, Kurt
item LA SCALA JUNIOR, NEWTON - Sao Paulo State University (UNESP)

Submitted to: Trade Journal Publication
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/27/2017
Publication Date: 4/20/2018
Citation: Almeida, R.F., De Bortoli Teixeira, D., Montanari, R., Bolonhezi, A.C., Teixeira, E.B., Moitinho, M.R., Panosso, A.R., Spokas, K.A., La Scala Junior, N. 2018. Ratio of CO2 and O2 as index for categorizing soil biological activity in sugarcane areas under contrasting straw management regimes. Soil Research. 56(4):373–381. https://doi.org/10.1071/SR16344.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1071/SR16344

Interpretive Summary: Knowledge of the processes controlling greenhouse gas emissions is critical in understanding processes to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas production. In this paper, we review instrumentation used to measure greenhouse gas fluxes in the field settings. We also axmined the number of studies that also measured the uptakle of oxygen during the chmaber deployment. The majority of publications use gas chromatography for the analyses. On the other hand, very limited studies exist that monitored O2 uptake simultaneously. We propose that this simutaneous analysis of multiple gas species is an important factor in determining greenhouse gas exchange rates. Thereby, these results suggest that these additional gas exchnage rates can be used to assess soil physical structure, which is a major factor in determining the gas emission potential of a particular soil. These results are significant to farmers and policy makers and will assist scientists and engineers in developing improved models for predicting net greenhouse gas emissions. These types of data will be critical for improving soil carbon management.

Technical Abstract: Gases or volatilized substances are analyzed using the technique known as gas chromatography (GC). We can use GC to generate quantitative and/or qualitative data to analyze substances/molecules for use in environmental, pharmaceutical, clinical or forensic analyses. Researchers within the environmental field use GC to analyze greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of soils under various land uses, ranging from nature preserves (forest/cerrado/savannah/prairies) to agricultural (rice, soy, pasture, corn and wheat) lands. This article reviews the use of GC in monitoring GHG and demonstrated uses in environmental, agricultural, and soil science. We also want to review the use of GC for monitoring O2 uptake and explain which columns and detectors are the most commonly used to obtain the most reliable results. We conclude that is important to choose the correct column and detector chromatograph to obtain reliable results for the separation of the gases of interest. To analyze GHG emissions and O2 uptake, capillary and packed columns are the better option with good reports of use. While, the GC can contain multiple detectors to analyze GHG and O2 uptake. There are significant number of publications that document GC use for GHG analyses. On the other hand, very limited studies exist that monitored O2 uptake simultaneously.