The global potential for mitigating nitrous oxide emissions from croplands

Xiaoqing Cui, Yan Bo, Wulahati Adalibieke, Wilfried Winiwarter, Xin Zhang, Eric A. Davidson, Zhongxiao Sun, Hanqin Tian, Pete Smith, Feng Zhou*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Agricultural activities contribute almost half of the total anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, but proper assessment of mitigation measures is hampered by large uncertainties during the quantification of cropland N2O emissions and mitigation potentials. This review summarizes the up-to-date datasets and approaches to provide spatially explicit and crop-specific assessment of the global mitigation potentials. Here, we show that global cropland N2O emissions have quadrupled to 1.2 Tg N2O-N year−1 over 1961–2020. The mitigation potential is 0.7 Tg N2O-N without compromising the crop production, with 86% from optimizing nitrogen fertilization, three-quarters (78%) from maize (22%), vegetables, and fruits (16%), other crops (15%), wheat (13%), and rice (12%), and over 80% from South Asia, China, the European Union, other American countries, the United States, and Southeast Asia. More accurate estimation of cropland N2O mitigation potentials requires extending the N2O observation network, improving modeling capacity, quantifying the feasibility of mitigation measures, and seeking additional mitigation measures.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)401-420
Number of pages20
JournalOne Earth
Volume7
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Mar 2024

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