EGUsphere

Copernicus Publications

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/egusphere-2025-5311

National-Scale Inventory based Climate Impact Analysis of the Nitrogen Balance, including all Nitrogen Fluxes using Process-Based Modelling with the LandscapeDNDC Model and EURO-CORDEX Ensembles for Greece

Sifounakis

Odysseas

¹ Haas

Edwin

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0664-642X

² Butterbach-Bahl

Klaus

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9499-6598

² ³ Katragkou

Eleni

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0863-3411

⁴ Karypidou

Maria Chara

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6796-8898

⁴ ⁵ Papadopoulou

Maria P.

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9252-4255

Laboratory of Physical Geography and Environmental Impacts, School of Rural, Surveying and Geoinformatics Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, 15780, Greece

Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK-IFU), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kreuzeckbahnstr. 19, D-82467 Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Department of Agroecology - Center for Landscape Research in Sustainable Agricultural Futures - Land-CRAFT, Aarhus University, Aarhus, 8000, Denmark

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Meteorology and Climatology, School of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Institute of Climate and Atmospheric Science, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, UK

02 12 2025

2025 1 35

2025

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-5311/

The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-5311/egusphere-2025-5311.pdf

In this study, we have simulated inventories of arable production and soil carbon and nitrogen cycling on a national scale (0.25 × 0.25-degree) for Greece with the bio-geochemical ecosystem model LandscapeDNDC. Based on observation data, we have aggregated for each grid cell 4 most likely crop rotations, including nitrogen and manure fertilization, tilling and irrigation. The arable management was continuously projected into the future until 2100, while plant phenology was adapted to local conditions, general properties of the arable management were kept constant into the future, such as the selection of crops or the share of irrigated arable land. To understand the impacts of climate change, we used the EURO-CORDEX-11 regional climate ensemble to drive the LandscapeDNDC impact model under scenarios RCP4.5 (16 datasets) and RCP8.5 (32 datasets). The simulation timespan was from 1990 until 2100, using the first 10 years as spin-up to obtain equilibrium in the model's internal carbon and nitrogen pools from the model initialization. Arable production declines from 2045 onwards by 9.5% or 144 kg C ha-1 yr-1 under RCP4.5 and by 29% or 484 kg C ha-1 yr-1 towards 2100. At present, the ensemble results show an average soil carbon loss of 122.1 kg C ha-1 yr-1 versus 139.7 kg C ha-1 yr-1 in the future. The gaseous outfluxes of the ensemble simulations show N2O emissions of 0.494  to 0.453 kg N2O–N ha−1 yr−1, NO emissions of 0.031 kg NO–N ha−1 yr−1, N2 emissions of 4.806 to 3.377 kg N2–N  ha−1 yr−1, NH3 emissions of 24.662 to 35.040 or 34.205 kg NH3–N  ha−1 yr−1 and nitrate leaching losses from 54.304 to 58.213 kg NO3-N ha−1 yr−1 comparing present versus future conditions. The overall nitrogen balance of the ensemble simulations reveals a mean nitrogen loss of 4.7 versus 5.7 kg-N ha-1 yr-1 comparing present to future conditions.

Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation

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