Analysis of seasonal carbon dioxide exchange of winter wheat using eddy covariance method in the northwest part of Turkey

Increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased the research on the estimation of the greenhouse gas budget components. As it is well known, terrestrial ecosystem is one of the significant components in the global greenhouse gas budget. The aim of this study was to investigate the amount of the CO₂ emissions, which is one of the key greenhouse gases, from winter wheat using the eddy covariance method. The measurements were made over two growing periods on an experiment field at Atatürk Soil Water and Agricultural Meteorology Research Institute Directorate (AMRI) in the city of Kırklareli, located in the northwestern part of Turkey. In addition to these, relationships between cumulative CO₂ fluxes and vegetation dynamics such as leaf area index, biomass and normalized difference vegetation index have been investigated under rainfed conditions. Finally, it has been found that the means of accumulated net ecosystem exchange (net carbon sink), gross primary production (carbon fixed by photosynthesis) and respiration (carbon lost by respiration) fluxes during the growing period of winter wheat are -398±43, 1094±48 and 696±91 g Cm-2, respectively. Strong relations between cumulative CO₂ fluxes and vegetation dynamics have been obtained for winter wheat.