Portable nitrous oxide sensor for understanding agricultural and soil emissions

Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas (GHG,) with an atmospheric lifetime of ~114 years and a global warming impact ~300 times greater than that of CO2. The main cause of nitrous oxide’s atmospheric increase is anthropogenic emissions, and over 80% of the current global anthropogenic flux is related to agriculture, including associated land-use change. An accurate assessment of N2O emissions from agriculture is vital not only for understanding the global N2O balance and its impact on climate and also for designing crop systems with lower GHG emissions. Such assessments are currently hampered by the lack of instrumentation and methodologies to measure ecosystem-level fluxes at appropriate spatial and temporal scales. Southwest Sciences and Princeton University will develop new open-path eddy covariance techniques and instrumentation for continuous and fast (10 Hz) measurement of nitrous oxide emissions. Once tested and validated, the method will transform the ability to measure and understand ecosystem-level nitrous oxide fluxes at multiple scales. The work plan includes assessment of key underlying technical issues supporting the technique during the Phase I budget period, followed by development of prototype flux instrumentation that will be tested extensively in field environments during the Phase II budget periods. At the conclusion of the Fast Track project, Southwest Sciences will develop and market a commercial instrument to the atmospheric research community. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The results of this research will be commercialized as a product for N2O measurements that is truly portable and cost- effective. The technology is especially groundbreaking as it could be widely applied across CO2-based FLUXNET sites (>1200 worldwide) for direct measurements of N2O exchange. The technology can be more broadly applied to a wide range of gas monitoring requirements in industry, environmental monitoring, health and safety, etc.