CAREER: Improving Our Understanding of Nitrous Oxide Emissions to the Atmosphere

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This CAREER award is supporting research to resolve key questions about the emissions of N2O (nitrous oxide) to the atmosphere. Both observations and modeling will be used to help improve the understanding of how agricultural soils and surrounding waterways contribute to the global problem of rising N2O levels. The project includes activities and collaborations that bring interest in scientific research to K-12 students, particularly those who are under-represented in the sciences.The two questions that are motivating and guiding the proposed investigation are:1. Why are state-of-the-art models and inventories unable to accurately reproduce regional scale N2O emissions?2. What are regional-scale controls on current and future N2O emissions in North America?As part of this project, tower and aircraft measurements over soils and waterways encompassing natural and fertilized lands in the Corn Belt and along the lower Mississippi River basin will be combined with a regional Lagrangian transport model to determine contemporary emissions of N2O. Geostatistical modeling will be used to establish the statistical relationship between variables such as temperature, precipitation, inundation state, and soil moisture and regional emissions.