title: Effect of the application of cattle urine with or without the nitrification inhibitor DCD, and dung on greenhouse gas emissions from a UK grassland soil.
abstract: Emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) from soils from grazed grasslands have large uncertainty due to the great spatial variability of excreta deposition, resulting in heterogeneous distribution of nutrients. The contribution of urine to the labile N pool, much larger than that from dung, is likely to be a major source of emissions so efforts to determine N2O emission factors (EFs) from urine and dung deposition are required to improve the inventory of greenhouse gases from agriculture. We investigated the effect of the application of cattle urine and dung at different times of the grazing season on N2O emissions from a grassland clay loam soil. Methane emissions were also quantified. We assessed the effect of a nitrification inhibitor, dicyandiamide (DCD), on N2O emissions from urine application and also included an artificial urine treatment. There were significant differences in N2O EFs between treatments in the spring (largest from urine and lowest from dung) but not in the summer and autumn applications. We also found that there was a significant effect of season (largest in spring) but not of treatment on the N2O EFs. The resulting EF values were 2.96, 0.56 and 0.11% of applied N for urine for spring, summer and autumn applications, respectively. The N2O EF values for dung were 0.14, 0.39 and 0.10% for spring, summer and autumn applications, respectively. The inhibitor was effective in reducing N2O emissions for the spring application only. Methane emissions were larger from the dung application but there were no significant differences between treatments across season of application.
authors.affiliation: Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, Okehampton EX20 2SB, UK.
authors.forename: L M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Cardenas
authors.affiliation: Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, Okehampton EX20 2SB, UK.
authors.forename: T M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Misselbrook
authors.affiliation: Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, Okehampton EX20 2SB, UK.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hodgson
authors.affiliation: Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, Okehampton EX20 2SB, UK.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Donovan
authors.affiliation: Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, Okehampton EX20 2SB, UK.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gilhespy
authors.affiliation: School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Crew Building, Alexander Crum Brown Road, Edinburgh EH9 3FF, UK; Woodlands One, Pomeroy Villas, Totnes, Devon TQ9 5BE, UK.
authors.forename: K A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, Okehampton EX20 2SB, UK.
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Dhanoa
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography, Bangor University, Deiniol Rd., Bangor LL57 2UW, UK.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chadwick
keywords: DCD; Dicyandiamide; Dung; Meta-analysis; Nitrous oxide; Urine