Cattle manure biochar and earthworm interactively affected CO2 and N2O emissions in agricultural and forest soils: Observation of a distinct difference

The application of manure-derived biochar offers an alternative to avoid the direct application of manure to soil causing greenhouse gas emission. Soil fauna, especially earthworms, can markedly stimulate carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from soil. This study therefore investigated the effect of cattle manure biochar (added at rates of 0, 2%, or 10%, coded as BC0, BC2 and BC10, respectively) application, with or without earthworm Aporrectodea turgida, on emissions of CO2 and N2O and changes of physic-chemical properties of agricultural and forest soils in a laboratory incubation experiment. The BC10 treatment significantly enhanced cumulative CO2 emissions by 27.9% relative to the untreated control in the agricultural soil. On the contrary, the BC2 and BC10 treatments significantly reduced cumulative CO2 emissions by 16.3%–61.1% and N2O emissions by 92.9%–95.1% compared to the untreated control in the forest soil. The addition of earthworm alone significantly enhanced the cumulative CO2 and N2O fluxes in agricultural and forest soils. Cumulative CO2 and N2O fluxes were significantly increased when BC2 and BC10 were applied with earthworm in the agricultural soil, but were significantly reduced when BC10 was applied with earthworm in the forest soil. Our study demonstrated that biochar application interacted with earthworm to affect CO2 and N2O emissions, which were also dependent on the soil type involved. Our study suggests that manure biochar application rate and use of earthworm need to be carefully studied for specific soil types to maximize the climate change mitigation potential of such management practices.