N2O and CH4 fluxes from intensively managed grassland: The importance of biological and environmental drivers vs. management

Summary

Agriculture is the main contributor to anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N₂O) and methane (CH₄) emissions. Therefore, mitigation options are urgently needed. In contrast to carbon dioxide, eddy covariance measurements of N₂O and CH₄ fluxes are still scarce, and thus little is known how environmental and biotic drivers as well as management affect the net N₂O and CH₄ exchange in grasslands. Thus, we investigated the most important drivers of net ecosystem N₂O and CH₄ fluxes in a temperate grassland, and continued a N₂O mitigation experiment (increased clover proportion vs. fertilization with slurry). Random forest gap-filling models were able to capture intermittent emission peaks, performing bette