Improving GHG flux monitoring in agricultural soil through the AGRESTIC prototype: a focus on the assessment of data quality

Measuring at high frequency soil fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitrous oxide (N2O) in agricultural soils requires appropriate technology. With this aim, a prototype was developed and tested in agricultural soils for 5 months, within the framework of the LIFE project AGRESTIC. The prototype is composed by two automatic GHG stations for measuring CO2 (LI-COR LI-850) and N2O (Teledyne GFC-7002TU) fluxes from soil and an IT infrastructure for data management. The two GHG stations were installed one in Ravenna, Italy, (Ca Bosco farm) and the other in Foggia, Italy, (Caione farm), where two different cropping systems were compared. Along the period going from January 1st to May 31st, 2020 the two GHG stations proved to be robust to field conditions (e.g. wind, rain, freeze etc.). The quality of the measurements was different in the two sites, with more than 90% of good measurements in Ravenna and more than 60% in Foggia.