Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-20-2016
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.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
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.
DOI
10.1038/srep26279
Link to Article at Publisher Website
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