Objective Ammonia emitted from agricultural fields has led to significant adverse effects on air, soil and water environment. To evaluate the fate of applied nitrogen fertilizers, guide the rational application of nitrogen (N) fertilizers and eliminate the adverse environmental effects caused by ammonia volatilization (AV), it is important to measure AV in field conditions. The dynamic chamber method is commonly used in determining AV from rice fields. However, there are still some drawbacks associated with this method. These limitations lead to the incomparability between different research results and thus affect the systematic analysis and assessment of regional ammonia emissions from farmland.Method In this study, the effects of the air exchange rate, time of the measurement, characteristics of the dynamic chamber, types of air-washing device, and the difference between vacuum pumping and natural wind environment on AV were studied.Result Results showed that AV increased with the increase of air exchange rate. Overall, there were three stages during the increase of AV which was linearly correlated with the logarithm of the air exchange rate. The diurnal variation of AV was different between the period of rapid hydrolysis of the applied urea and the period after rapid hydrolysis of urea. As for the types of air-washing device, AV values measured with the spherical porous and straight through types were 25.6% and 8.5% lower than that measured with disk porous type, respectively. The larger the inner diameter and the lower the height of the gas phase of the dynamic chamber are, the lower the ammonia volatilization is. Volatilized ammonia absorbed by two gas washing bottles in series is only 88.6% of that absorbed by the single gas washing bottle. The evaporation within the dynamic chamber increased with the air exchange rate. Although the amount of surface water loss within the container which was ventilated via vacuum pumping was similar to that under the natural ventilation environment, AV of the former container is relatively low. This indicates that the process of AV is affected to some extent by the vacuum pump and air-washing system.Conclusion It is obvious that the influencing factors such as air exchange rate, measurement period during the rapid hydrolysis of applied urea, characteristics of the dynamic chamber, and the air-washing device should all be considered in measuring AV. The transparent dynamic chamber (diameter 15 cm) connected with a separate flowmeter and only one gas-washing bottle, containing gas-washing holes on the side of the disk or the end side of the straight rod, airflow rate of 15-20 L·min^–1, and the gas phase height of 5-8 cm are recommended to be employed in measuring ammonia volatilization from rice fields.