It is estimated that roughly half of the fertilizer applied to soils is lost before plants can use it. A lot of this nitrogen ends up in the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, ammonia, and nitrogen oxides (NOx). We use micrometeorological techniques such as the flux gradient and eddy covariance to measure the fluxes of these nitrogen species to the atmosphere, along with other important gases. Our goal is to improve the measurements of atmospheric nitrogen losses to ultimately improve the efficiency of the use of nitrogen by crops.
We have been funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research (FFAR), to implement multiple “super sites” in Europe and America that can effectively measure how much nitrogen is lost to the atmosphere under different agricultural practices. More info here:
