title: Prediction of N2O emission from local information with Random Forest.
abstract: Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential 298 times greater than that of CO2. In agricultural soils, N2O emissions are influenced by a large number of environmental characteristics and crop management techniques that are not systematically reported in experiments. Random Forest (RF) is a machine learning method that can handle missing data and ranks input variables on the basis of their importance. We aimed to predict N2O emission on the basis of local information, to rank environmental and crop management variables according to their influence on N2O emission, and to compare the performances of RF with several regression models. RF outperformed the regression models for predictive purposes, and this approach led to the identification of three important input variables: N fertilization, type of crop, and experiment duration. This method could be used in the future for prediction of N2O emissions from local information.
authors.affiliation: AgroParisTech, UMR 211 Agronomie, F-78000 Thiverval Grignon, France.
authors.forename: Aurore
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Philibert
authors.forename: Chantal
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Loyce
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Makowski
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D000397:Air Pollution / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods; D005308:Fertilizers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009585:Nitrogen Dioxide / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants; D005308:Fertilizers; D009585:Nitrogen Dioxide