Regional analysis of soil-atmosphere nitrous oxide emissions in the Northern Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica

摘要: Summary Regional analysis of greenhouse gas emissions is becoming increasingly important in answering questions related to environmental change, and typically employs a Geographic Information System (GIS) linked with process-based simulation model. For the Northern Atlantic Zone (NAZ) Costa Rica (281 649 ha), regional soil–atmosphere nitrous oxide fluxes from dominant land-use types forest, cattle pastures, banana plantations was performed both deterministic stochastic variable representations. The representation accounted for soil land management variability across nongeoreferenced fields within 1572 georeferenced units 13 relevant classes. Per class, frequency distributions field-scale were simulated model Monte Carlo methods. Stochastic incorporation use resulted areal (i.e. unit-scale) that 14–22% lower than estimates based on averaged inputs. Soil heterogeneity dominant. In addition, spatial flux patterns current (1992) two alternative scenarios evaluated using With management, oxide-N (standard deviation parentheses) agricultural 0.43 (0.13) Gg y−1. Replacing natural grasses mixtures N-fixing species introducing different forms plantation (alternative I) increased by 51% 0.65 (0.22) Gg y−1. When all replaced fertilized improved allowing II), 126% 0.97 (0.68) Gg y−1. Using revised IPCC methodology, 1992 emission agriculture NAZ estimated be 0.32 Gg y−1. Due formidable data requirements, may not easily used produce country-level estimates. However, does provide valuable benchmark against which more straightforward methodology can evaluated.