Ammonia emissions from nitrogen fertilised agricultural soils: Controlling factors and solutions for emission reduction

Catrin Rathbone, Sami Ullah*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

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Abstract

Environmental context: Ammonia emissions from inorganic nitrogen fertilisers used in agriculture can impact air quality, human health and ecology. This study quantifies such emissions and their controlling factors from UK and Ireland agricultural soils. Emissions are variable and, from non-urea fertilisers, substantially exceed maximum emission factors used by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. This suggests that UK emission factors need to be refined further, with consideration of inter alia land-use, fertiliser type, soil pH and chemical inhibitors.

Rationale: Ammonia (NH3) emissions from inorganic nitrogen (N) fertilisers applied to agricultural soils have negative implications for environmental quality and human health. Despite this, efforts to reduce NHemissions in the UK have achieved limited success. This study aims to provide an overview of NHemissions from UK and Ireland agricultural soils receiving N fertilisers, their regulating factors and the potential role of inhibitors in reducing current NHlosses.

Methodology: A systematic literature search was performed to identify relevant experimental data and studies, and the extracted data (total of 298 field fertilisation events) were categorised and analysed systematically.

Results: NHemissions ranged from -4.00 to 77.00% of applied fertiliser-N lost as NH3. In addition to fertiliser type, NH3 losses were also significantly affected by land-use type and soil pH. Urease and combined urease and nitrification inhibitors significantly reduced emissions by 74.50 and 70.00% compared to uninhibited-urea respectively.

Discussion: In addition to fertiliser types, land-use and soil pH were found as factors for consideration as modifiers to the maximum NHemission factor (EFmax) values currently used in the UK, in order to improve estimations of NHemissions, particularly from non-urea fertilisers. This is imperative as NHlosses exceeded current EFmax limits, particularly in the case of non-urea fertilisers, by 34%, implying that NHemissions estimated from UK synthetic fertiliser require further refinements. NHlosses are not completely inhibited, inhibitors cannot be solely relied upon for tackling NHemissions from UK and Ireland fertiliser usage and further research is needed into alternative mitigation methods to further reduce NHlosses.

Original languageEnglish
JournalEnvironmental Chemistry
Early online date20 Jul 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 20 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge funding from the BBSRC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Innovation Club project (BB/R021716/1) and NERC-NSF grant-DiRTS (NE/T012323/1).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing.

Keywords

  • agriculture
  • ammonia
  • inorganic nitrogen fertilisers
  • Ireland
  • NHlosses
  • nitrification inhibitors
  • Soil
  • UK
  • urea
  • urease inhibitors

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Chemistry (miscellaneous)
  • Environmental Chemistry
  • Geochemistry and Petrology

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