Earth's Systems / Biological processes / Terrestrial ecosystem functioning / Living soil system / Soil-atmosphere exchange of methane and nitrous oxide

Soil-atmosphere exchange of methane and nitrous oxide

Aerated soils oxidise atmospheric methane while nitrification and denitrification in the same soils emit nitrous oxide, so soil is both a small sink and a large source of greenhouse gases.

Boundary: where this process starts

Starts with: Aerated upland soil oxidises atmospheric Methane with high-affinity methanotrophs

Boundary: where it ends

Ends after: Nitrous oxide persists about 109 years with 100-year warming potency of about 273 times CO2; methane sink offsets only a little; Above about 80% water-filled pore space denitrification runs on to N2 and the N2O share falls

What am I looking at? The concepts on every map

Participant: Someone or something that takes part in a process or influences it: a plant, a microbe, a river, a machine, a force. Participants are the rows of a map.
Resource: Something a step uses or uses up: water, oxygen, sunlight, a tool. Each step has an arrow down to the resources it uses.
Step: One thing that happens in a process. Every step has at least one participant and carries evidence.
Decision fork: A step where the process can go several ways. Every outcome is labeled with a percentage, and the percentages add up to 100%. It is not limited to yes or no.
Loop: A line that carries the process back to an earlier step. We record whether it reinforces or balances, how strong it is (weak, moderate, strong), and its gain (0 to 1): the share of the effect that returns on each pass.
Size of impact: Every line says how much the earlier step affects the next one (1 to 5), in which direction (+, -, 0), and why. Thicker lines mean bigger impact.
Evidence: The support for a claim: a source and what it shows. Every step, line, change and vote needs it. Click any step or line to read its evidence.
Boundary: Where a process starts and where it ends. Every process, and every subprocess, has a start and an end.
Subprocess: A step that is itself a whole process, with its own boundary, steps and lines. Click a step marked ↘ to open it. Subprocesses nest as deep as the evidence goes.
Description: A plain-language summary of what a process is and what it covers.
Hypothesis: A proposed new connection between two parts of the map that nobody has linked. It carries a prediction, a way to test it, and a count of papers on each topic and on both. It is an unverified idea until someone tests it.

Every step, with its evidence

The same information as the map, as a list you can search and share. Click a participant or resource to see everywhere it appears.

Aerated upland soil oxidises atmospheric Methane with high-affinity methanotrophs

Methanotrophs Soil Methane Oxygen