A preliminary study to model the effects of a nitrification inhibitor on nitrous oxide emissions from urine-amended pasture

New Zealand's grazed pastures receive large quantities of nitrogen (N) inputs from animal excreta and chemical fertilisers. While N promotes pasture growth, surplus N can cause environmental problems by leaching into waterways or by nitrifying and denitrifying to form the greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide (N2O). Various approaches have been attempted to mitigate the economic and environmental impacts of N losses. One such approach is the use of nitrification inhibitors (NIs). The value of these inhibitors in mitigating N losses in grazed pasture partly depends on their rate of biodegradation and persistence in soils. A simplified model of nitrification inhibition was used with the process-based NZ-DNDC model to investigate the effect of NI dicyandiamide (DCD) on transformations of N to nitrate (NO3-) and subsequent reduction to N2O in a grazed pasture system receiving cow urine at application rate of 600 kg N/ha. The modelled N2O emissions with and without DCD application were comparable to the field measurements on Tokomaru silt loam soil, assuming that the effect of the DCD was to decrease the nitrification rate by about 70%. An attempt was also made to simulate the effect of the biological degradation of DCD by exponentially decreasing the inhibitor effectiveness with time. However, this did not improve the fit of the modelled N2O emissions over the 50-day measurement period. Further refinements including the effects of soil type, and changes in NI concentration throughout the soil profile over time and its subsequent effect on N transformations will be developed as more experimental data become available. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.