The Measurement of Agriculture Illuminating farm-Zone Emissions of N2O (MAIZE) project collected airborne measurements of nitrous oxide (N2O) around intensive agricultural regions in Iowa and Nebraska during the early growing seasons of 2021 and 2022. Datasets in this collection include the airborne measurement data for each year, as well as optimized posterior fluxes for each Iowa flight day derived from the aircraft observations.
The airborne platform (Mooney, ChampionX) included an Aerodyne Research, Inc. TILDAS Compact Single Laser N2O Analyzer in 2021 and a Los Gatos Research (LGR) N2O/CO analyzer (Model 916-0015) in 2022. GPS antennae, mounted on the Mooney aircraft, recorded latitude, longitude, altitude, aircraft heading, zonal speed, and meridional speed. Horizontal winds are calculated following Conley et al (2014). Temperature (C) and humidity (%) were collected with the Vaisala HMP60 probe. Aircraft speeds averaged around 70 meters per second.
Related publications:
Gvakharia A, Kort EA, Smith M, Conley S, (2018) Testing and evaluation of a new airborne system for continuous N2O, CO2, CO, and H2O measurements: the Frequent Calibration High-performance Airborne Observation System (FCHAOS), Atmos. Meas. Tech. 11, 6059-6074, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-6059-2018
Conley S, Faloona I.C, Lenschow D.H, Karion A, Sweeney S, (2014) A low-cost system for measuring horizontal winds from single-engine aircraft, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 31(6), 1312-1320, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-13-00143.1
