Quantifying the Effect of Fertiliser Application on Nitrous Oxide Pulses in Oil Palm Plantation

The environmental impacts of oil palm production systems have raised global concerns due to the large quantities of greenhouse gases released (including nitrous oxide, N 2 O) into the atmosphere.To understand the effects and the response to the nitrogen fertiliser application on N 2 O 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.N 2 O flux was highly temporally variable, with large increases in N 2 O flux following fertiliser application.The mean (± standard error) of N 2 O 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 N 2 O 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 N 2 O fluxes in this ecosystem, suggesting that N 2 O flux was principally determined by fertiliser input rates.