Balance assessment of carbon dioxide dynamics in the soil of MSU Large lysimeters

Abstract

The main components of the CO2 balance - emission from the surface, removal with lysimetric runoff, and dynamics of reserves in a 1.5 m soil layer, taking into account interphase equilibria, were quantitatively assessed in a 2-year soil-lysimetric experiment. A significant (up to 20-90%) contribution of lysimetric runoff to the total gas exchange in cold weather (autumn-winter) against the background of a small (0.3-3.7%) share during the growing season (spring-summer) is shown. Due to the unsteadiness and inertia of gas accumulation / unloading processes inside the soil, emission from the surface does not adequately reflect the gross CO2 production by the soil volume, underestimating in the spring-summer period and overestimating in autumn. The obtained 2-year correlation between emission and gross-production indicates the possibility of a 1.3-1.4-fold underestimation of the dissimilation component of the carbon cycle in the traditional emission assessment of soil respiration.