Articles | Volume 14, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-187-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-187-2017
Research article
 | 
12 Jan 2017
Research article |  | 12 Jan 2017

Smallholder farms in eastern African tropical highlands have low soil greenhouse gas fluxes

David Pelster, Mariana Rufino, Todd Rosenstock, Joash Mango, Gustavo Saiz, Eugenio Diaz-Pines, German Baldi, and Klaus Butterbach-Bahl

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Cited articles

Altieri, M. A. and Koohafkan, P.: Enduring farms: Climate change, smallholders and traditional farming communities, Third World Network, Environment and Development series No. 6, Penang, Malaysia, 63 pp., 2008.
Arias-Navarro, C., Díaz-Pinés, E., Kiese, R., Rosenstock, T. S., Rufino, M. C., Stern, D., Neufeldt, H., Verchot, L. V., and Butterbach-Bahl, K.: Gas pooling: A sampling technique to overcome spatial heterogeneity of soil carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide fluxes, Soil Biol. Biochem., 67, 20–23, 2013.
Baggs, E. M., Chebii, J., and Ndufa, J. K.: A short-term investigation of trace gas emissions following tillage and no-tillage of agroforestry residues in western Kenya, Soil Till. Res., 90, 69–76, 2006.
Baldi, G., Houspanossian, J., Murray, F., Rosales, A. A., Rueda, C. V., and Jobbágy, E. G.: Cultivating the dry forests of South America: Diversity of land users and imprints on ecosystem functioning, J. Arid Environ., 123, 47–59, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2014.05.027, 2015.
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Short summary
In order to quantify greenhouse gas fluxes from typical eastern African smallholder farms, we measured flux rates every week for 1 year at 59 farms in western Kenya. These upland soils tend to be small sinks for CH4 and small sources of N2O. The management intensity of the farm plots had no effect on emissions, likely because the variability was low. Plots with trees had higher CH4 uptake than other plots. This suggests that emissions from small, low-input farms in this region are quite low.
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