Comparison of soil CO2 emissions from three different tillage methods on chernozem soil

Tillage practices influence soil CO₂ emissions, hence many research investigate the long-term effects of conservation and conventional tillage methods e.g. ploughing and no-tillage on soil greenhouse gas emission.

The experiment site is an 18-years-old long-term tillage trial established on chernozem soil. During 2020, we took weekly CO₂ emission measurements in the mouldboard ploughing (MP), no-tillage (NT), and shallow cultivation (SC) treatments Tillage depth was 26-30 cm, 12-16 cm and 0 cm in the cases of MP, SC and NT respectively. The experiment was under wither oat cultivation.

We investigated the similarity in the CO₂ emission trends of SC to MP or NT treatments. Besides CO₂ emission measurements, we also monitored environmental parameters such as soil temperature (Ts) and soil water content (SWC) in each treatment.

During the investigated year (2020 January - December) SC had higher annual mean CO₂ emission (0.115±0.083 mg m^-2 s^-1) compared to MP (0.099±0.089 mg m^-2 s^-1) and lower compared to NT (0.119±0.100 mg m^-2 s^-1). The difference of the CO₂ emissions was significant between SC and MP (p<0.05); however, it was not significant between SC and NT (p>0.05) treatments. The Ts dependency of CO₂ emission was moderate in all treatments. CO₂ emissions were moderately depended on SWC in MP and SC, and there was no correlation between these parameters in NT.

The annual mean CO₂ emission of the SC treatment was more similar to the NT, than to the MP treatment.