Soil CO₂ production rates and fluxes vary with time and depth. The shallow near-surface soil layer is important for myriad soil processes, yet knowledge of dynamic CO₂ concentrations and fluxes in this complex zone is limited. We used a concentration gradient method (CGM) to determine CO₂ production and effluxes with depth in shallow layers of a bare soil. The CO₂concentration was continuously measured at 13 depths in the 0- to 200-mm soil layer. For an 11-d period, 2% of the soil CO₂ was produced below a depth of 175 mm, 8% was produced in the 50- to 175-mm soil layer, and 90% was produced in the 0- to 50-mm soil layer. Soil CO₂concentration showed similar diurnal patterns with temperature in deeper soil layers and out-of-phase diurnal patterns in surface soil layers. Soil CO₂ flux from most of the soil layers can be described by an exponential function of soil temperature, with temperature sensitivity (Q₁₀) ranging from 1.40 to 2.00 (1.62 ± 0.17). The temperature-normalized CO₂ fluxes are related to soil water content with a positive linear relationship in surface soil layers and a negative relationship in deep soil layers. The CO₂ fluxes from CGM and chamber methods had good agreement at multiple time scales, which showed that the CGM method was able to estimate near-surface soil CO₂ fluxes and production. The contrasting patterns between surface and deep layers of soil CO₂ concentration and fluxes suggest the necessity of intensive CO₂concentration measurements in the surface soil layer for accurate determination of soil-atmosphere CO₂ flux when using the CGM.