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An Empirical Model of Soil Chemical Properties that Regulate Methane Production in Japanese Rice Paddy Soils

^a National Inst. for Agro-Environmental Sciences, 3-1-3 Kannondai, Tsukuba 305-8604, Japan
^b Dep. of Marine and Ecological Sciences, Florida Gulf Coast Univ., Fort Myers, FL 33965
^c Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD 21037

^* Corresponding author (cheng{at}niaes.affrc.go.jp).

Received for publication April 22, 2007. To understand which soil chemical properties are the best predictors of CH₄ production in rice paddy soils, a model was developed with empirical data from nine types of rice soils collected around Japan and anaerobically incubated at 30°C for 16 wk in laboratory conditions. After 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 wk of incubation, CO₂, CH₄, and Fe(II) were measured to understand soil organic matter decomposition and iron (Fe) reduction. Available N (N_ava) was also measured at the end of incubation. The results showed that decomposable C and reducible Fe are two key parameters that regulate soil CH₄ production (P_CH4). There was a significant relationship between decomposable C and available N (N_ava) (r² = 0.975**). Except for a sandy soil sample, a significant relationship between total Fe (Fe_total) and reducible Fe was found. From this experiment, a simple model of soil CH₄ production was developed: P_CH4 = 1.593N_ava – 2.460Fe_total/1000 (each unit was mg kg^–1 soil). After simulated CH₄ production by two soil chemical properties as above, there was a significant consistency between model simulation and actual measurement (r² = 0.831**).