Acknowledgements This work was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is a strategic partnership of CGIAR and Future Earth. This research was carried out with funding by the European Union (EU) and with technical support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The UN FAO Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) Programme funded data collection in Kenya and Tanzania. The views expressed in the document cannot be taken to reflect the official opinions of CGIAR, Future Earth, or donors. We thank Louis Bockel of the UN FAO Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA) for his comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Chirinda, Ngonidzashe

De Neergaard, Andreas

Duong Vu, Quynh

Hillier, Jonathan

Keller, Emma

Ly, Proyuth

Malin, Daniella

Metzel, Ruth

Nyamadzawo, George

Oelofse, Myles

Olesen, Jørgen E.

Richards, Meryl

Rosenstock, Todd S.

Wollenberg, Eva

Scientific Reports

English

PubMed

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

Richards, Meryl B.

Vu, Quynh Duong

Neergaard, Andreas de

Wollenberg, Eva Karoline

CGSpace (CGIAR)

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

Acknowledgements This work was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is a strategic partnership of CGIAR and Future Earth. This research was carried out with funding by the European Union (EU) and with technical support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The UN FAO Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) Programme funded data collection in Kenya and Tanzania. The views expressed in the document cannot be taken to reflect the official opinions of CGIAR, Future Earth, or donors. We thank Louis Bockel of the UN FAO Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA) for his comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.Peer reviewe

Aberdeen University Research

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.</p

de Neergaard, Andreas

Rosenstock, Todd S

Copenhagen University Research Information System

Limits of agricultural greenhouse gas calculators to predict soil N<sub>2</sub>O and CH<sub>4</sub> fluxes in tropical agriculture

https://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/169733388/srep26279.pdf

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

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