Nitrous oxide isotopologue signatures measured from static chambers in smallholder maize and potato plots in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya

DOI

N₂O isotopologue signatures – including bulk δ¹⁵N (‰ vs. air N₂), intramolecular site preference (δ¹⁵N^SP = δ¹⁵Nα − δ¹⁵Nβ, ‰), and δ¹⁸O (‰ vs. VSMOW) – measured from headspace gas samples collected monthly from static chambers in smallholder maize and potato plots in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya. This is the first field-scale N₂O isotopologue dataset from a sub-Saharan African agroecosystem. Gas samples were collected by syringe (180 mL per sample) 36 minutes after chamber closure and stored in pre-evacuated crimp-top vials. Isotopologue composition was determined using an Elementar Trace Gas purge-and-trap system coupled to an Elementar IsoPrime100 isotope ratio mass spectrometer (IRMS); five Faraday cups (m/z 30, 31, 44, 45, 46) measured N₂O isotopologues simultaneously. Data span from March 2024 to March 2025 at the University of Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County, Kenya (0°34′45″N, 35°18′22″E; 2,213 m a.s.l.). Four nitrogen fertilisation rates were applied to maize and potato in a randomised complete block design with three replicates: maize at 50 kg N ha⁻¹ , maize at 100 kg N ha⁻¹, potato at 50 kg N ha⁻¹ , and potato at 100 kg N ha⁻¹. Samples with IRMS peak area below 5 mV·s are flagged as low-signal and excluded from pathway partitioning calculations. Data were collected to attribute N₂O emissions to specific microbial production pathways and to quantify in-soil N₂O reduction to N₂ across contrasting crop and fertilisation treatments. This dataset is part of a multi-variable collection archived at PANGAEA.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.995349
Related Identifier IsPartOf https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.995337
Related Identifier References https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5912075
Related Identifier References https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009785521107
Related Identifier References https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2023.108724
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.995349
Provenance
Creator Ouma, Turry ORCID logo; Barthel, Matti; Oluoch, Kevin Churchill; Otinga, Abigael; Njoroge, Ruth; Leitner, Sonja; Oduor, Collins; Agredazywczuk, Phillip ORCID logo; Zhu, Yuhao; Tamburini, Federica ORCID logo; Obozinski, Guillaume; Six, Johan ORCID logo; Harris, Eliza
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2026
Funding Reference Swiss National Science Foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001711 Crossref Funder ID 207348 https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/207348 N2O-SSA: Combining measurements, modelling and machine learning to improve N2O accounting for sustainable agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; Data access is restricted (moratorium, sensitive data, license constraints); https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess false
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 2028 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (35.306 LON, 0.580 LAT); Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County, Kenya
Temporal Coverage Begin 2024-03-05T03:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2024-11-20T03:00:00Z