The search for agricultural practices that mitigate N2O emissions, and the validation and development of models, would benefit if the uncertainty of emission estimates would be reduced relative to current levels. This uncertainty has different sources, such as the error of the flux measurements, the error caused by spatially scaling up measurements to the field or regional level, and the error caused by estimating emissions for the time intervals between measurements by interpolation. This paper focuses on the uncertainty of flux measurements and on flux spatial variability, which is a major cause of error when measured fluxes are scaled up spatially. The analysis focuses on 2415 flux measurements made with the closed chamber method over a monitoring campaign of approximately 3 years. Statistically significant nonlinearities in the changes of N2O concentrations during chamber closure were infrequent (8.3%). Further analysis of significant non‐linear concentration changes indicates that, for positive fluxes, nonlinearity might not always be an artifact caused by chamber placement, but that it can reflect natural temporal variability of the flux during chamber placement in a significant number of cases. The analysis of the coefficients of determination (R2) and of the normalized root mean squared errors (NRMSE) of the linear regressions shows that, below emission rates of 5 g N2O‐N ha−1 d−1, the uncertainty of flux estimates strongly increases. The flux detection limit was 3.5 g N2O‐N ha−1 d−1, which is consistent with the outcome of the analysis of the R2s and NRMSEs. Flux measurements based on less than five N2O concentrations per flux led to estimates with considerably larger confidence intervals. When the number of N2O concentrations per flux was reduced from five to four, the detection limit increased to 7.5 g N2O‐N ha−1 d−1. The individual fluxes of spatially replicated plots show strong dispersion around the mean: the average coefficient of variation for fluxes above 5 g N2O‐N ha−1 d−1 was 54.3% and the data suggest that the spatial variability of fluxes correlates positively with flux magnitude. Our results suggest that, for measurements performed with the closed static chamber method, (1) linear regression might generally lead to the best estimates of the average fluxes during closure time, and that the chamber sampling strategy might be designed accordingly, (2) there is considerable potential to reduce the uncertainty for fluxes lower than 5 g N2O‐N ha−1 d−1 by employing analytical instrumentation with higher precision, (3) flux uncertainty and detection limit are strongly affected by the number of concentrations measured for each flux, and (4) large numbers of replicated chambers could be particularly beneficial if high fluxes are expected.

Soils can naturally be a source of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N 2 O). By contrast, the largest anthropogenic source of N 2 O is the application of nitrogen (N) fertilizer on agricultural soil, but it is unclear if fertilizer-supported N 2 O emission only originates from the fertilizer N directly or through additionally stimulated N 2 O production from native soil N. Even though native soil N also includes mineral N already in soil before fertilizer application, organic N is the principal native N pool and thereby provides for mineral N cycling and N 2 O emission. Here, we tested (1) the contribution of native soil N to N 2 O emission after mineral N fertilizer application and (2) whether it is affected by different soil organic matter (SOM) contents by conducting a laboratory 15 N-tracing experiment with agricultural soil from a long-term field trial with two treatments. Both field treatments are fertilized with mineral N, whereas only one of the two receives liquid manure causing higher SOM content. Soil sampling was conducted in March 2016 shortly before fertilizer application in the field. The application of 15 N-labeled fertilizer more than doubled the N 2 O production from native N sources compared to the non-fertilized control incubations. This primed N 2 O production contributed by 5-8% to the fertilizer-induced N 2 O emission after one week of incubation and was similar for both field treatments regardless of liquid manure application. Therefore, further research is needed to link N 2 O priming to its potential production pathways and sources. While the observed effect may be important in soils, the amount of applied N fertilizer remains the largest concern being responsible for the majority of N 2 O emission.

No abstract

No abstract