Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-2025

Abstract

Even though the impact of cover crops on soil moisture has been well documented, little work has investigated the resulting impact on methane emissions. Therefore, the objective was to determine the influence of a dormant seeded rye (Secale cereale) cover crop on soil temperatures, soil moisture, inorganic N, and total CH4-C emission in a well-drained frigid soil from the start of growth in April/May through corn's (Zea mays) V4 growth stage. In this study, soil moisture, temperature, CH4-C, and N2O-N fluxes were measured near-continuously. The rye cover crop: (1) reduced the water-filled porosity in the surface 5 cm in 2018 and 2020; (2) did not influence soil temperature prior to corn's V2 growth stage, increased the soil temperature between the V2 and V4 growth stages in 2019, and reduced the soil temperature in 2020; and (3) reduced (p < 0.01) the CH4 flux prior to corn seed emergence (VE) in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Over the 3 years, rye reduced (p = 0.04) CH4 flux (increased soil methane sink) by 6.4 g (ha × day)−1 prior to VE and reduced (p = 0.02) carbon dioxide equivalence (CO2e) from −1.9 to −11.9 kg CO2e ha−1. These decreases accounted for 22.3% of the CO2e derived from N2O (53.4 kg CO2e-N2O) and suggest that the rye cover crop induced reductions in CH4 emissions need to be considered in carbon intensity calculations.

Publication Title

Agronomy Journal

First Page

e70118

DOI of Published Version

10.1002/agj2.70118

Publisher

Wiley

Rights

© 2025 The Author(s).

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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