Celsias Team
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas and a precursor to compounds that contribute to the destruction of the ozone.It's 300 times the impact of carbon dioxide.According to Stephen Hamilton, a Michigan State University professor, nitrous oxide exists at low levels in the atmosphere, but is responsible for 6 percent of climate warming and also contributes to stratospheric ozone destruction.
Intensively managed, grazed pastures are responsible for an increase in nitrous oxide emissions from grazing animals’ excrement. Biochar is potentially a mitigation option for reducing the world’s elevated carbon dioxide emissions, since the embodied carbon can be sequestered in the soil. Biochar also has the potential to beneficially alter soil nitrogen transformations.
In New Zealand , where the Emissions Trading Scheme covers all green house gases,the ability to take action against nitrous oxide is much sought after.
A new study has found that levels of a powerful greenhouse gas called nitrous oxide has risen by more than 20 percent over the last century.
The source could be traced to the growth of nitrogen fertilizers and the cultivation of crops that return nitrogen to the soil naturally. Some of the nitrogen entering streams is converted to nitrous oxide.
Laboratory tests have indicated that adding biochar to the soil could be used to suppress nitrous oxide derived from livestock. Biochar has been used for soil carbon sequestration in the same manner.
In a study funded by the Foundation for Research Science and Technology,scientists at Lincoln University in New Zealand, and using biochar supplied by NZ company Carbonscape conducted an experiment over an 86-day spring/summer period to determined the effect of incorporating biochar into the soil on nitrous oxide emissions from the urine patches produced by cattle. Biochar was added to the soil during pasture renovation and gas samples were taken on 33 different occasions. The study was published in the March/April 2011 issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality.
Addition of biochar to the soil allowed for a 70% reduction in nitrous oxide fluxes over the course of the study.That reduction was 70% ! Nitrogen contribution from livestock urine to the emitted nitrous oxide decreased as well. The incorporation of biochar into the soil had no detrimental effects on dry matter yield or total nitrogen content in the pasture.
Arezoo Taghizadeh-Toosi who conducted the study, says that under the highest rate of biochar, ammonia formation and its subsequent adsorption onto or into the biochar, reduced the inorganic-nitrogen pool available for nitrifiers and thus nitrate concentrations were reduced. Such effects would have diminished the substrate available for microbial nitrous oxide production.”
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