Methane emissions from rice fields: Effect of soil properties

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Abstract
Flooded rice fields emit methane and are important contributors to the increasing atmospheric methane concentration. Various estimates of global release rates of methane from rice paddies range from a low of 20 Tg per year to a high of 200 Tg per year. Global estimates of methane emissions from rice fields depend upon obtaining reliable data from a variety of soil types. We have compared a variety of methane emission data sets obtained over a four‐year period from three different soil types found at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station near Beaumont, Texas, with several physical and chemical properties of the soils. We find that seasonal methane emissions directly correlate with the percent sand in the soils. Along a transect with soil sand content ranging from 18.8% to 32.5%, seasonal methane emissions ranged from 15.1 g m−2to 36.3 g m−2.