The influence of tillage on N<sub>2</sub>O fluxes from an intensively managed
grazed grassland in Scotland

Cowan, Nicholas J.; Levy, Peter E.; Famulari, Daniela; Anderson, Margaret; Drewer, Julia; Carozzi, Marco; Reay, David S.; Skiba, Ute M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-4811-2016

Articles | Volume 13, issue 16

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-4811-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Hotspots of greenhouse emissions from terrestrial ecosystems...

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-4811-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 16

Research article

|

29 Aug 2016

Research article |

| 29 Aug 2016

The influence of tillage on N₂O fluxes from an intensively managed grazed grassland in Scotland

Nicholas J. Cowan, Peter E. Levy, Daniela Famulari, Margaret Anderson, Julia Drewer, Marco Carozzi, David S. Reay, and Ute M. Skiba

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Final revised paper (published on 29 Aug 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 21 Jan 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of “The influence of tillage on N2O fluxes from an intensively managed grazed grassland in Scotland” by Cowan et al.', Lutz Merbold, 25 Feb 2016
- AC1: 'Reply to reviewer 1', Nicholas Cowan, 12 Apr 2016
RC2: 'referee report on the manuscript "the influence of tillage on n2o fluxes.." by Cowan et al', Eugenio Diaz Pines, 02 Mar 2016
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer 2', Nicholas Cowan, 12 Apr 2016
SC1: 'Short comment', Jakub Jurci, 08 Mar 2016
- AC3: 'Response to comments', Nicholas Cowan, 12 Apr 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (11 May 2016) by Mariana Rufino

AR by Nicholas Cowan on behalf of the Authors (29 Jun 2016) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Jul 2016) by Mariana Rufino

RR by Lutz Merbold (17 Jul 2016)

RR by Eugenio Diaz Pines (21 Jul 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I have read the new version of the manuscript of Cowan and colleagues comparing N2O emissions in a tilled and an un-tilled grassland in Scotland by means of a N2O EC tower as well as dynamic and static chambers. Most of my concerns to the previous version have been satisfactory solved. I appreciate the extra details to the footprint analyses and the further justification via CO2 data. I am also satisfied with the explanations regarding spatial/temporal variability and methods comparison; I agree with the authors that information is limited and probably does not allow for discussion without diving too much into speculation. Finally, conclusions have been revisited and they now reflect better the output of this paper.
For this reason, I consider the manuscript is suitable for publication in the special issue, and I only have a couple of minor details, which are listed below

L105: Remove “tilled”
L181: I think you didn´t get my previous point on this. In Cowan et al 2014 (EJSS, table 2) you report detection limits of 2 and 20 μgN2O-N m−2 h−1, which roughly equals 0.02 and 0.2 nmol m-2 s-1, respectively. My calculations: 2 μgN2O-N m−2 h−1 = 3.14 μg N2O m−2 h−1 = 7.14 nmol N2O m-2 h-1 = 0.0198 nmol N2O m-2 s-1.
L189 and following. I miss that you clear state that you fitted a GAM with the data from EC, static and dynamics chambers. It is only implicitly said in L205. I would also appreciate the number of measurements you gained with each method at each site to feed the GAM
L215: Remove either “prevailing” or “predominantly”, otherwise it is redundant.
L257: Probably change “fertiliser” by “fertilisation”
L273: Remove “for the 169 days”
Figs 5 and 7. Follow the same colour legend for both figures (i.e. represent EC measurements by grey circles in Fig 5)
L364: Specify in some manner that “short term” is about two months.
L388: remove the capitalized part of the title, it doesn´t belong to it.

Best regards,
Eugenio Díaz-Pinés

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (02 Aug 2016) by Mariana Rufino

AR by Nicholas Cowan on behalf of the Authors (03 Aug 2016) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Using a quantum cascade laser we measured N₂O fluxes before and after a tillage event on a long-term grazed grassland field using the flux chamber and eddy covariance methods. The measurements were gap-filled using a generalised additive model which used meteorological data at the site. Results suggest that tillage of soils containing plant material (crop residues) releases a relatively large amount of N₂O-N, similar in magnitude to approximately 0.9 % of the nitrogen in the plant materials.

The influence of tillage on N2O fluxes from an intensively managed grazed grassland in Scotland

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The influence of tillage on N₂O fluxes from an intensively managed grazed grassland in Scotland