Temperature response of ammonia and greenhouse gas emission from manure amended silty clay soil

Soil temperature plays an important role in organic matter decomposition, thus likely to affect ammonia and gaseous emission from land application of manure. An incubation experiment was conducted to quantify ammonia and greenhouse gas (GHG) (N₂O, CO₂ and CH₄) emissions from manure and urea applied at 215?kg N ha^?1 to Fargo-Ryan silty clay soil. Soil (250?g) amended with solid beef manure (SM), straw-bedded solid beef manure (BM), urea only (UO), and control (CT) were incubated at 5, 10, 15, and 25 °C for 31 days at constant 60% water holding capacity (WHC). The cumulative GHGs and NH₃ emission generally increased with temperature and highest emission observed at 25 °C. Across temperature levels, 0.11–1.3% and 0.1–0.7% of the total N was lost as N₂O and NH₃, respectively. Cumulative CO₂ emission from manure was higher than UO and CT at all temperatures (P?<?0.05). Methane accounted for <0.1% of the total C (CO₂?+?CH₄) emission across temperatures. The Q₁₀ values (temperature sensitivity coefficient) derived from Arrhenius and exponential models ranged 1.5–3.7 for N₂O, 1.4–6.4 for CO₂, 1.6–5.8 for CH₄, and 1.4–5.0 for NH_3. Our results demonstrated that temperature significantly influences NH₃ and GHG emissions irrespective of soil amendment but the magnitude of emission varied with soil nutrient availability and substrate quality. Overall, the highest temperature resulted in the highest emission of NH₃ and GHGs.