Carbon Dioxide Flux in a Subtropical Agricultural Soil of China

Red soils, one of the typical agricultural soils in subtropical China, play important roles in the global carbon budget due to their large potential to sequester C and replenish atmospheric C through soil CO2 flux. Soil CO2 emission was measured using a closed chamber method to quantify year-round soil flux and to determine the contribution of soil temperature, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and soil moisture content to soil CO2 flux. Soil flux was determined every 10 d during the experiment from August 1999 to July 2000, at the Ecological Station of Red Soil (the Chinese Academy of Sciences). In addition, diurnal flux measurements for 24 hr were made on August 5 and November 5, 1999 during this experiment. The average soil fluxes from 2 hr measurements between 9:00 and 11:00 can be regarded as the representative of daily averages. Soil CO2 fluxes were generally higher in summer and autumn than in winter and spring, averaged 7.16 and 0.86 g CO2 m-2 d-1 for the former and latter two seasons, and had a seasonal pattern more similar to soil temperature and DOC than soil moisture. The annual soil CO2 flux was estimated as 1.65 kg CO2 m-2 yr-1. Regressed separately, the reasons for soil flux variability were 86.6% from soil temperature, 58.8% from DOC, and 26.3% from soil moisture, respectively. Regressed jointly, a multiple equation was developed by the above three variables that explained 85.2% of the flux variance, but only soil temperature was the dominant factor affectingsoil flux, with significant partial correlation coefficient (r2 = 0.804, p ≤ 0.05), through stepwise regression analysis. Based on the exponential equation using soil temperature, the predicted fluxes were calculated and were essentially equal to the measured ones throughout the experiment. No significant difference was detected between the predicted average and the measured one. The exponential relationship describing the response of soil CO2 flux to the changes in soil temperature should accurately predict soil CO2 flux from red soils in subtropical China.