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Limits of agricultural greenhouse gas calculators to predict soil N<sub>2</sub>O and CH<sub>4</sub> fluxes in tropical agriculture
Richards, Meryl Metzel, Ruth Chirinda, Ngonidzashe Ly, Proyuth Nyamadzawo, George Duong Vu, Quynh De Neergaard, Andreas Oelofse, Myles Wollenberg, Eva Keller, Emma
Richards, Meryl
Metzel, Ruth
Chirinda, Ngonidzashe
Ly, Proyuth
Nyamadzawo, George
Duong Vu, Quynh
De Neergaard, Andreas
Oelofse, Myles
Wollenberg, Eva
Keller, Emma
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10.1038/srep26279
Abstract
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.
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2016-05-20
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Lini2016b.pdf
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Richards M, Metzel R, Chirinda N, Ly P, Nyamadzawo G, Vu QD, De Neergaard A, Oelofse M, Wollenberg E, Keller E, Malin D. Limits of agricultural greenhouse gas calculators to predict soil N 2 O and CH 4 fluxes in tropical agriculture. Scientific reports. 2016 May 20;6(1):1-8.