Process Rate Estimator (PRE)

Note

This repo is still very much work in progress.

This site contains the documentation for the process rate estimator. For a detailed (scientific) description of the process rate estimator, see Decock et al. (2022).

The project was done for the sustainable agro-ecosystems group at ETH Zurich. While the project documentation is presented on this website, the source code for the process rate estimator in contained in an R package called PRE. You can explore said package in this GitHub repository. A brief instruction of the installation of PRE is provided in the next chapter. Meanwhile, the scripts for running the process rate estimator on some collected data are contained by the main GitHub repository process-rate-estimator, which also contains this documentation page.

1 Introduction

Denitrification is the natural process by which nitrate (NO₃^-) in the soil are converted by bacteria into nitrous oxide (N₂O) or pure nitrigen (N₂). The latter is called total denitrification — the full process described in Equation 1.1 takes place.

\[ \ce{NO3^- ->[\text{Nitrate}][\text{reductase}] NO2^- ->[\text{Nitrite}][\text{reductase}] NO ->[\text{Nitrite oxide}][\text{reductase}] N2O^- ->[\text{Nitrous oxide}][\text{reductase}] N2} \tag{1.1}\]

Denitrification occurs in conditions where oxygen is limited, such as waterlogged soils. It is part of the nitrogen cycle, where nitrogen is circulated between the atmosphere, organisms and the earth.

Decock, C., J. Lee, M. Barthel, E. Verhoeven, F. Conen, and J. Six. 2022. Process rate estimator: A novel model to predict total denitrification using natural abundance stable isotopes of \(\text{N}_2\text{O}\). Biogeosciences Discussions 2022:1–29.