Seasonal and diurnal variations in net carbon dioxide flux throughout the year from soil in paddy field

In contrast to upland croplands, carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from soils has rarely been investigated previously in fields with paddy rice cultivation. In this study, we hypothesized that CO2 emission from paddy soils is suppressed to be a low level due the soil submergence for months for paddy rice cultivation and conducted a continuous measurement of net CO2 flux from the soil/water surface of a paddy field throughout the year, including both the submerged and drained periods. The net CO2 flux was generally near zero during the submerged period with paddy rice cultivation and showed a slight CO2 influx in the daytime and efflux at nighttime, indicating dominance of photosynthetic CO2 uptake and respiratory CO2 release by aquatic weeds and algae in paddy water. The diurnal variations in net CO2 flux and dissolved CO2 concentration had negative correlations with the pH of paddy water. A remarkably high CO2 efflux was observed during the period with intermittent drainage in summer. Unexpectedly, the cumulative CO2 emissions throughout the year were not considerably lower than those reported in upland croplands ranging from 1309 to 2160 g CO2 m−2 yr−1, of which 41–48% was emitted from the first drainage in summer to the rice harvest in autumn. In summary, in this study, we revealed that CO2 emission from soil in paddy fields is strictly suppressed during the submerged period, but considerably enhanced by the succeeding drainage, which may negate the suppressed CO2 emission during the submerged period.