Soil emissions account for 72% of total nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions within agriculture, mainly form field application of fertilizers, animal manure and crop residues. N application also contributes to ammonia (NH3) emissions and represents 28% of the total Flemish agricultural emission. The above figures rely on general internationally used emission factors, the representativeness of which for our region can hardly be verified due to a lack of measurements of soil emissions within Flemish agriculture. In addition farmers also need concrete mitigation measures, for example through adapted fertilization strategies that increase the efficiency of nitrogen (N) availability in the soil. Within the LILA project, we focus with field experiments and model simulation on:

1) refining emission factors for N2O (by major emission source: mineral fertilizer, slurry, farmyard manure), to better understand the contribution and importance of each of these sources.

2) investigating innovative measures to minimize N2O, NH3 and CH4 emissions from manure and fertilizer use, also identifying trade-offs between NH3 and N2O.

3) estimating trade-off effects between N2O soil emissions and carbon sequestration for organic fertilizer and crop residues.

The obtained results will be translated into decision support tools such as the Klimrek climate scan. In addition, refined emission factors will be proposed for the Flemish greenhouse gas inventory so that efforts of the agricultural sector can be calculated more correctly.