Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from livestock systems MELS

January 2020-December 2022 Coordinator: Barbara Amon (ATN, Germany) SAS Contact: Mélynda Hassouna SAS research axis: Integrated Assessment - Systems and Flows Website Keywords: GHG, Ammonia, Inventories, Livestock, Emission factor

Research

The European Union’s Effort Sharing Agreement and the United Nations’ Paris Agreement create challenging targets for decreasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and represent short- and long-term existential threats to livestock production systems, respectively.

The MELS project will build on the Global Research Alliance DATAMAN project by collating additional data on emissions from manure management and activity/ancillary data. The data will be used to generate functional relationships between emissions and activity/ancillary variables, enabling a refinement of national inventories and better assessment of the cost-effectiveness of a range of mitigation measures. MELS will assess and recommend improvements to existing farm-scale decision-support systems (DSSs) in relation to GHG emissions from livestock production systems, including grazing ruminants, by refining the calculations used to predict emissions. A prototype farm-scale DSS will be developed for countries lacking such a tool and implemented in at least one country. This will allow the consequences of mitigation strategies on emissions and costs to be quantified more accurately and better documented, at both national and farm scales.

Publications

Beltran, I., van der Weerden, T.J., Alfaro, M.A., Amon, B., de Klein, C.A.M., Grace, P., Hafner, S., Hassouna, M., Hutchings, N., Krol, D.J., Leytem, A.B., Noble, A., Salazar, F., Thorman, R.E., Velthof, G.L., DATAMAN: A global database of nitrous oxide and ammonia emission factors for excreta deposited by livestock and land-applied manure. Journal of Environmental Quality. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jeq2.20186

SAS Staff involved

Mélynda Hassouna

Partners

• French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE)
• Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB) - University of Zielona Góra (UZG) - AgResearchLtd 
• Agricultural Research Institute (INIAChile) 
• Poznan University of Life Sciences (PULS) - University of Athens (AUA)
• Cork University Business School, University College Cork (CUBSUCC)
• Irish Food and Agriculture Development Authority (TEAGASC)

Funding and Support

Laureate of the joint call of three ERA-NET projects (FACCE ERA-GAS, ERA-NET SusAn and ICT-AGRI 2) on novel technologies, solution and systems to reduce GHG emissions in animal production systems. INRAE is an in kind partner.