QUANTIFYING THE EFFECT OF FERTILISER APPLICATION ON NITROUS OXIDE PULSES IN OIL PALM PLANTATION
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21894/jopr.2024.0032
Received: 14 September 2023 Accepted: 20 February 2024 Published Online: 14 May 2024
The environmental impacts of oil palm production systems have raised global concerns due to the large quantities of greenhouse gases released (including nitrous oxide, N2O) into the atmosphere. To understand the effects and the response to the nitrogen fertiliser application on N2O flux for mitigation planning, emissions were monitored intensively over the course of two field campaigns from 2015 to 2016. The study was conducted in an oil palm plantation cultivated on peat in Sarawak, Malaysia. N2O flux was highly temporally variable, with large increases in N2O flux following fertiliser application. The mean (± standard error) of N2O flux from the first and second sampling campaigns were 129.000 ± 9 mg N m–2 d–1 and 1.021 ± 150 mg N m–2 d–1, respectively. The magnitude of the N2O flux and the timing of the emissions peak varied for different sampling campaigns, reaching a maximum of 384.000 ± 77 mg N m–2 d–1 30-days after the first fertiliser application event and 3.777 ± 777 mg N m–2 d–1 7-days after the second application. During fertilisation events, environmental variables played only a weak role in modulating N2O fluxes in this ecosystem, suggesting that N2O flux was principally determined by fertiliser input rates.
KEYWORDS:1 Malaysian Palm Oil Board,
6 Persiaran Institusi, Bandar Baru Bangi,
43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia.
2 Economic Planning Unit Sarawak,
Chief Minister’s Department,
93502, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.
3 School of Natural and Environmental Sciences,
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, United Kingdom.
* Corresponding author e-mail: norliyanazz@mpob.gov.my.