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Articles | Volume 11, issue 2
Articles | Volume 11, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-11-639-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-11-639-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 11, issue 2
Short communication
 | 
25 Sep 2025
Short communication |  | 25 Sep 2025

Overcoming barriers in long-term, continuous monitoring of soil CO2 flux: a low-cost sensor system

Thi Thuc Nguyen, Nadav Bekin, Ariel Altman, Martin Maier, Nurit Agam, and Elad Levintal

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Cited articles

Altman, A.: OpenDigiEnvLab/soil-CO2-sensor-system: Soil CO2 sensor system (v1.0.0), Zenodo [data set], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17152482, 2025. 
Andrews, H. M., Krichels, A. H., Homyak, P. M., Piper, S., Aronson, E. L., Botthoff, J., Greene, A. C., and Jenerette, G. D.: Wetting-induced soil CO2 emission pulses are driven by interactions among soil temperature, carbon, and nitrogen limitation in the Colorado Desert, Glob. Change Biol., 29, 3205–3220, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16669, 2023. 
Baldocchi, D. D., Hincks, B. B., and Meyers, T. P.: Measuring biosphere-atmosphere exchanges of biologically related gases with micrometeorological methods, Ecology, 69, 1331–1340, https://doi.org/10.2307/1941631, 1988. 
Barnard, R. L., Blazewicz, S. J., and Firestone, M. K.: Rewetting of soil: Revisiting the origin of soil CO2 emissions, Soil Biol. Biochem., 147, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2020.107819, 2020. 
Bastviken, D., Sundgren, I., Natchimuthu, S., Reyier, H., and Gålfalk, M.: Technical Note: Cost-efficient approaches to measure carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes and concentrations in terrestrial and aquatic environments using mini loggers, Biogeosciences, 12, 3849–3859, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-12-3849-2015, 2015. 
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Short summary
This study presents a new, low-cost sensor system for measuring soil CO2 gas continuously over long periods. Built using easy-to-get hardware components, the system costs USD 700. It was tested for six months in desert soil, proving to be reliable, easy to maintain, and capable of capturing important changes in soil CO2. The CO2 flux calculations from this system closely matched those from a standard measurement device, making it a practical tool for research requiring multiple sensor systems.
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