Sustainability in agricultural practices: Carbon footprint of agricultural groundwater pumping, and microbial denitrification in agricultural soils

Abstract

This study aims to identify agricultural energy, water, and nutrient management practices that decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from irrigated agriculture. Irrigation water and agricultural improvements like fertilizer application are required for crop production and increasing crop yield to satisfy food demand of the growing population. However, negative consequences of these activities include production of GHG emissions. To mitigate this global environmental problem, the management methods that minimize agricultural GHG emissions should be identified. Accordingly, the objectives of this work are i) to identify methods that decrease carbon emission of agricultural groundwater withdrawal, ii) to quantify cradle-to-field GHG emission estimations of corn production under different fertilizer and irrigation management, and iii) to investigate the denitrification gene abundance in corn field soils under different application rates of irrigation water and fertilizers.