Measuring Greenhouse Gas Exchange from Paddy Field Using Eddy Covariance Method in Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Agriculture is an important economic sector of Vietnam, the most common is wet rice cultivation. Wet rice cultivation is known as the main contributor to national greenhouse gas emissions. To better understand greenhouse gas exchange in wet rice cultivations and to investigate the factors influencing carbon cycling and sequestration in these types of ecosystems, since 2019, the first eddy covariance station has been installed in a paddy field in Long An province, Mekong Delta, Vietnam. The station is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment for CO2 and CH4 gas exchange and meteorological ancillary measurements. Data from the station are processed following the ICOS recommendations (Integrated Carbon Observation System) for CO2. For CH4, data are separately processed and gap-filled using a random forest model from methane-gap fill-ml, a machine learning package, as there is no standard method for CH4 flux gap-filling yet. Finally, the CO2 equivalent (CO2eq) based on CO2 and CH4 fluxes was estimated. The study area implemented a new water management practice called alternate wetting and drying, which helps to save water and reduce methane emissions. This practice resulted in the minor release of 0.8 kg CH4 per hectare in 2020 and 0.67 kg CH4 per hectare in 2021. However, CO2eq from the rice fields was negative, indicating that the rice fields acted as a sink for CO2eq, with -5.54 kg CO2eq per hectare in 2020 and -7.03 kg CO2eq per hectare in 2021. On a provincial level, rice cultivation activities in Long An, with a total area of 498293 ha, resulted in a CO2eq uptake of 2760 and 3503 tons in 2020 and 2021, respectively. This result is in contrast to the initial hypothesis that rice fields are a source of greenhouse gases. However, N2O was not investigated in this study, which is also known as a strong greenhouse gas.