A field lysimeter study was conducted to determine the sources of N2O emitted following the application of dairy cow urine and urea fertiliser labelled with 15N, with and without a nitrification inhibitor, dicyandiamide (DCD). The results show that the application of cow urine at 1000 kg N/ha significantly increased N2O emissions above that from urea applied alone at 25 kg N/ha. The application of urine seemed to have a priming effect, increasing N2O emissions from the soil N pool. Treating the soil with DCD significantly (P < 0.05) decreased N2O emissions from the urine-applied treatment by 72%. The percentage of N2O-N derived from the applied N was 53.1% in the urine-applied treatment and this was reduced to 29.9% when DCD was applied. On average, about 43% of the N2O emitted in the urine-applied treatments was from nitrification. The application of DCD did not have a major effect on the relative contributions of nitrification and denitrification to N2O emissions in the urine treatments. This indicates that the DCD nitrification inhibitor decreased the contributions to N2O emissions from both nitrification and denitrification.
Metabolism of nitric oxide and nitrous oxide during nitrification and denitrification in soil at different incubation conditions