Publications

The annual carbon dioxide fluxes used to create all graphs in the main text of McGrath et al, "European synthesis of CO2 emissions and removals for EU27 and UK: 1990-2020", submitted to Earth System Science Data.

<p>This dataset contains all data (in csv format) linked to the figures from the ESSD submitted paper: <strong>"The consolidated European synthesis of CH<sub>4</sub> and N<sub>2</sub>O emissions for EU27 and UK: 1990-2017"</strong></p>\n\n<p>Petrescu,<sup> </sup>A. M. R., Qiu,<sup> </sup>C., Ciais,<sup> </sup>P., Thompson, R.L.,<sup> </sup>Peylin, P., McGrath, M. J., Solazzo,<sup> </sup>E.,<sup> </sup>Janssens-Maenhout, G,<sup> </sup>Tubiello, F. N., Bergamaschi, P., Brunner, D., Peters, G. P., Höglund-Isaksson, L., Regnier, P., Lauerwald, R., Bastviken, D.,<sup> </sup>Tsuruta, A.,<sup> </sup>Winiwarter, W.,<sup> </sup>Patra, P. K., Kuhnert, M., Orregioni, G. D., Crippa, M.,<sup> </sup>Saunois, M.,<sup> </sup>Perugini, L., Markkanen, T.,<sup> </sup>Aalto, T.,<sup> </sup>Groot Zwaaftink, C. D., Yao, Y., Wilson, C.,<sup> </sup>Conchedda, G., Günther, D., Leip,<sup> </sup>A., Smith,<sup> </sup>P., Haussaire,<sup> </sup>J.-M., Leppänen, A., Manning, A. J., McNorton, J., Brockmann, P., and Dolman, A. J.: The consolidated European synthesis of CH<sub>4</sub> and N<sub>2</sub>O emissions for EU27 and UK: 1990-2017, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., essd-2020-367, in review, 2020.</p>\n\n<p> </p>

This study was conducted with the financial support of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, and the University of Peshawar, Pakistan. We greatly acknowledge with deep gratitude this financial support

Abstract. We summed estimates of the carbon balance of forests, grasslands, arable lands and peatlands to obtain country-specific estimates of the terrestrial carbon balance during the 1990s. Forests and grasslands were a net sink for carbon, whereas croplands were carbon sources in all European countries. Hence, countries dominated by arable lands tended to be losing carbon from their terrestrial ecosystems, whereas forest-dominated countries tended to be sequestering carbon. In some countries, draining and extraction of peatlands caused substantial reductions in the net carbon balance. Net terrestrial carbon balances were typically an order of magnitude smaller than the fossil fuel-related carbon emissions. Exceptions to this overall picture were countries where population density and industrialization are small. It is, however, of utmost importance to acknowledge that the typically small net carbon balance represents the small difference between two large but opposing fluxes: uptake by forests and grasslands and losses from arable lands and peatlands. This suggests that relatively small changes in either or both of these large component fluxes could induce large effects on the net total, indicating that mitigation schemes should not be discarded a priori. In the absence of carbon-oriented land management, the current net carbon uptake is bound to decline soon. Protecting it will require actions at three levels; a) maintaining the current sink activity of forests, b) altered agricultural management practices to reduce the emissions from arable soils or turn into carbon sinks and c) protecting current large reservoirs (wetlands and old forests), since carbon is lost more rapidly than sequestered.

A waste-to-protein system that integrates a range of waste-to-protein upgrading technologies has the potential to converge innovations on zero-waste and protein security to ensure a sustainable protein future. We present a global overview of food-safe and feed-safe waste resource potential and technologies to sort and transform such waste streams with compositional quality characteristics into food-grade or feed-grade protein. The identified streams are rich in carbon and nutrients and absent of pathogens and hazardous contaminants, including food waste streams, lignocellulosic waste from agricultural residues and forestry, and contaminant-free waste from the food and drink industry. A wide range of chemical, physical, and biological treatments can be applied to extract nutrients and convert waste-carbon to fermentable sugars or other platform chemicals for subsequent conversion to protein. Our quantitative analyses suggest that the waste-to-protein system has the potential to maximise recovery of various low-value resources and catalyse the transformative solutions toward a sustainable protein future. However, novel protein regulation processes remain expensive and resource intensive in many countries, with protracted timelines for approval. This poses a significant barrier to market expansion, despite accelerated research and development in waste-to-protein technologies and novel protein sources. Thus, the waste-to-protein system is an important initiative to promote metabolic health across the lifespan and tackle the global hunger crisis.