Spatial and temporal variability of soil GHG fluxes of urban greens

Global urbanization has significantly affected land use, with former agricultural or forested land being used for human settlements and urban green spaces. How this urbanization may have affected the spatial and temporal patterns of soil greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes, especially those of nitrous oxide (N₂O), remains largely unexplored, although a recent study indicated that urbanization accelerates GHG fluxes from soils.

In this study, we investigated soil GHG fluxes at Aarhus University Park (AU Park), a public park located in a hilly landscape with different use intensities. Soil GHG fluxes were measured 2-3 times per week over a period of 7 months using a fast chamber approach at about 55 sampling points with different management, vegetation, and landscape position (uphill, slope, foothill, ponds). Specifically, we focused on the identification of GHG flux hot and cold spots, and thereby investigated the temporal persistence of such spatial emission patterns.

Our results show that GHG fluxes were highly variable over the observation period, but that major GHG flux hotspots, such as those near a pond, were hotspots at all observation times. In addition, we were able to relate the spatio-temporal variations in soil GHG fluxes to landscape parameters such as slope and exposition, and to soil parameters such as soil organic carbon concentration, pH, and texture.

Our measurements show that there are significant spatio-temporal variations in GHG fluxes in urban parks and that these variations are strongly influenced by environmental and landscape parameters. This observation may allow a better scaling of GHG fluxes of urban green spaces and thus a better assessment of how urbanization changes landscape fluxes.