Jianwen Zou

Professor, College of Resources & Environmental Sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University

+86-25-84396286

Email: jwzou21 [at] njau.edu.cn (jwzou21[at]njau[dot]edu[dot]cn)

Summary of my work

My research primarily focuses on soil carbon/nitrogen cycling and agricultural greenhouse gases, in collaboration with Professor David Wolfe at Cornell. My ongoing projects include Soil C/N cycling and global change supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (41225003); and Water-carbon-nitrogen management for mitigating GHGs in various cropping systems supported by the Ministry of Science & Technology, China (2012CB417102). Under the funding of above projects, our research attempts to address the following issues:

  1. The mechanism and strategies to mitigate the integrated GWPs of CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions from typical agroecosystems in China. The mitigation strategies could be the new agricultural cultivation patterns or techniques. We are attempting to assess the mitigation potentials based on field flux measurements and examine the involved soil microbial mechanisms. These studies would give insights into GHGs in typical agroecosystems in China;
  2. Effect of shifts in agricultural cropping regime on GHGs. Shifts in agricultural cropping regimes, such as organic versus conventional cropping systems, no/low-tillage versus tillage cropping systems, would have great impacts on agricultural GHGs emission. These studies would help to optimize agriculture cropping systems with high yield and low GHGs emission in China;
  3. The response and feedback of agroecosystem to climate change. We are interested in the impacts of air temperature increases and CO2 enrichment on crop growth, soil C and N processes and the GHGs emission based on field studies (FACE or T-FACE platform), and the feedback and adaptation of agroecosystem to climate change as well.

Impacts in China

China is one of the major agricultural countries in the world, and greenhouse gas emissions from Chinese croplands and its mitigation potential are of great concerns worldwide. My research related to agricultural greenhouse gases would be helpful for developing national inventory of greenhouse gases emission from Chinese croplands and identifying the agricultural mitigation and adaptation to climate change.