Assessment of CO2 flux measurements in different soil types

Accurate measurements of soil CO2 efflux are extraordinarily challenging due to the very properties of CO2 transport in a porous medium of soil. The most commonly used method today is the chamber method, which provides direct measurements of CO2 efflux at the soil surface, but it can not measure the soil CO2 flux continuously. In order to develop new measurement methods in soil CO2 efflux, small solid-state CO2 sensors have been used to continuously to monitor soil CO2 profiles by burying these sensors at different soil depths. Using this method we compared soil CO2 efflux of four different soil types: forests soil, grassland soil (collected in Maryland) commercial potting soil and pure sand as control. CO2 concentration varied between 500 ppm in sand and 8000 ppm in forest soil at depth 12 cm. CO2 flux had the following order: Forest (0.3~0.4 mg CO2 m-2 s-1), potting soil (0.1~0.14 mg CO2 m-2 s-1 ), grassland (0.03~0.05 mg CO2 m-2 s-1), sand ( 0 mg CO2 m-2 s-1 ). Exponential relationship between temperature and CO2 flux was established for forest soil and potting soil only. Leaf litter, often thick layer in many terrestrial ecosystems and a significant source of CO2 production, is not part of the of the diffusivity models. We are currently conducting experiments which include the effect of leaf litter and soil invertebrates into soil respiration.