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Limits of agricultural greenhouse gas calculators to predict soil N2O and CH4 fluxes in tropical agriculture

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Title Limits of agricultural greenhouse gas calculators to predict soil N2O and CH4 fluxes in tropical agriculture
 
Creator Richards, Meryl B.
Metzel, Ruth
Chirinda, Ngonidzashe
Ly, Proyuth
Nyamadzawo, George
Vu, Quynh Duong
Neergaard, Andreas de
Oelofse, Myles
Wollenberg, Eva K.
Keller, Emma
Malin, Daniella
Olesen, Jorgen E.
Hillier, Jonathan
Rosenstock, Todd S.
 
Subject greenhouse gas
soil
climate change
agriculture
food security
mitigation
 
Description Demand for tools to rapidly assess greenhouse gas impacts from policy and technological change in the agricultural sector has catalyzed the development of ‘GHG calculators’— simple accounting approaches that use a mix of emission factors and empirical models to calculate GHG emissions with minimal input data. GHG calculators, however, rely on models calibrated from measurements conducted overwhelmingly under temperate, developed country conditions. Here we show that GHG calculators may poorly estimate emissions in tropical developing countries by comparing calculator predictions against measurements from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Estimates based on GHG calculators were greater than measurements in 70% of the cases, exceeding twice the measured flux nearly half the time. For 41% of the comparisons, calculators incorrectly predicted whether emissions would increase or decrease with a change in management. These results raise concerns about applying GHG calculators to tropical farming systems and emphasize the need to broaden the scope of the underlying data.
 
Date 2016-05-20
2016-05-24T19:07:47Z
2016-05-24T19:07:47Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Richards MB, Metzel R, Chirinda N, Ly P, Nyamadzawo G, Vu QD, de Neergaard A, Oelofse M, Wollenberg E, Keller E, Malin D, Olesen JE, Hillier J, Rosenstock TS. 2016. Limits of agricultural greenhouse gas calculators to predict soil N20 and CH4 fluxes in tropical agriculture. Scientific Reports 6:26279.
2045-2322
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/74313
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https://doi.org/10.1038/srep26279
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-4.0
Open Access
 
Source Scientific Reports