Spatiotemporal dynamics of methane emission from rice fields at global scale

Rice fields are one of the anthropogenic sources of methane emission with largest uncertainty. Precise global estimation from different sites is difficult due to large spatial and temporal variabilities in climate, soil properties, duration and pattern of flooding, rice cultivars and crop growth, organic amendments, fertilization, and cultural practices. The temporal dynamics of methane emission from rice fields represented by ordinary differential equations is coupled with its spatial dynamics by connecting the temporal methane emission model with soil–climate model. This model includes detailed biogeochemical processes of methane emission, which is capable to identify emission sources and can be used to address the natural/artificial control and feedback issues. A complete computational scheme for identifying out-busting emission sources and for simulating and reducing methane emission from rice fields has been proposed in this paper with respect to space and time.