Global Research Alliance N2 O chamber methodology guidelines: Guidelines for gap-filling missing measurements

Abstract

Nitrous oxide (N₂ O) is a potent greenhouse gas that is primarily emitted from agriculture. Sampling limitations have generally resulted in discontinuous N₂ O observations over the course of any given year. The status quo for interpolating between sampling points has been to use a simple linear interpolation. This can be problematic with N₂ O emissions, since they are highly variable and sampling bias around these peak emission periods can have dramatic impacts on cumulative emissions. Here, we outline five gap-filling practices: linear interpolation, generalized additive models (GAMs), autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), random forest (RF), and neural networks (NNs) that have been used for gap-filling soil N₂ O emissions. To facilitate the use of improved gap-filling methods, we describe the five methods and then provide strengths and challenges or weaknesses of each method so that model selection can be improved. We then outline a protocol that details data organization and selection, splitting of data into training and testing datasets, building and testing models, and reporting results. Use of advanced gap-filling methods within a standardized protocol is likely to increase transparency, improve emission estimates, reduce uncertainty, and increase capacity to quantify the impact of mitigation practices.