Evaluating an in-situ, Low-Cost Soil CO2 Sensor as a Soil Health Assessment Tool in Agricultural Soils

Measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from agricultural soils are essential to understand the journey of an agricultural operation toward sustainability. Existing commercial technologies to measure CO2 emissions are expensive and require advanced technical knowledge. A new, low-cost, in-situ CO2-measuring device was designed and standardized by the authors to upscale CO2 emission measurements in commercial agricultural operations, spatially and temporally. We present an initial report from our preliminary studies as we measured CO2 emissions in different agroecosystems and compared different management strategies. Diurnal soil respiration or CO2 emission was also measured under different weather conditions. We coined the term, Potential Soil Respiration or PSR, to indicate the CO2 emission from soils with actively growing crops. Our data revealed that cover cropping influenced carbon storage in the soil while fallowing continued to lose soil carbon in a cotton production system, which was correlated with plant vigor. We are also working toward integrating this sensory system with other existing or new sensory systems to be deployed in commercial agricultural operations for effective natural resource management and environmental stewardship.