Regional nitrous oxide flux in Amazon basin

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is the third most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas. Globally, the main sources of N2O are nitrification and denitrification in soils. About two thirds of the soil emissions occur in the tropics and approximately 20% originate in wet rain forest ecosystems, like the Amazon forest. The work presented here involves aircraft vertical profiles of N2O from the surface to 4 km over two sites in the Eastern and Central Amazon: Tapajos National Forest (2000-2009) and Cuieiras Biologic Reserve (2004-2007), and the estimation of N2O fluxes for regions upwind of these sites using two methods: Column Integration Technique and Inversion Model - FLEXPART. To our knowledge, these regional scale N2O measurements in Amazonia are unique and represent a new approach to looking regional scale emissions. For the both methods, the fluxes upwind of Cuieiras Biologic Reserve exhibited little seasonality, and the annual mean was 1.9 ±1.6 mgN2Om-2day-1 for the Column Integration Technique and 2.3±0.9 mgN2Om-2day-1 for Inversion Model - FLEXPART. For fluxes upwind of Tapajos Nacional Forest, the Inversion Model - FLEXPART presented about half (0.9±1.7 mgN2Om-2day-1) of the Column Integration Technique (2.0±1.1 mgN2Om-2day-1) for the same period (2004-2008). One reason could be because the inversion model does not consider anthropic activities, once it had a good representation for less impacted area. Both regions presented similar emission during wet season. By Column Integration Technique, fluxes upwind Tapajos Nacional Forest were similar for dry and wet seasons. The dry season N2O fluxes exhibit significant correlations with CO fluxes, indicating a larger than expected source of N2O from biomass burning. The average CO:N2O ratio for all 38 profiles sampled during the dry season was 82±69 mol CO:molN2O and suggests a larger biomass burning contribution to the global N2O budget than previously reported. (author)