TITLE:
An Empirical Model for Dinitrogen Gas Emission from Inland Waters
AUTHORS:
Elizabeth Sikar, Marco Aurelio dos Santos, Ednaldo Oliveira dos Santos
KEYWORDS:
Dinitrogen Gas Emission, Inland Waters, Bubbles, Diffusion, Nitrogen Cycle, Denitrification
JOURNAL NAME:
Atmospheric and Climate Sciences,
Vol.9 No.1,
December
3,
2018
ABSTRACT: The motivation to calculate this empirical model resulted from often observing—at the time disconcerting—excess dinitrogen gas (N2 concentration > background concentration) in bubble-gas emission samples, collected primarily for the purpose of carbon budget research, from Brazilian rivers and reservoirs sampled during roughly 100 field surveys lasting 4 days each on average and executed between years 2000 and 2012. We model the (serendipitously) measured dinitrogen gas above environmental concentration (N2aec) escaping in bubbles from Brazilian rivers as a function of dissolved nitrogen (N) in water. To this model, we mathematically add a pre-existing model of diffusively emitted denitrified dinitrogen (also as a function of dissolved N) from streams in the United States of America (USA). The resulting model predicts denitrified dinitrogen water-air emission from inland waters in the USA, China and Germany.