1,298 publications from this institution
Abstract Agricultural lands occupy about 40–50% of the E arth's land surface. Agricultural practices can make a significant contribution at low cost to increasing soil carbon sinks, reducing greenhouse gas ( GHG ) emissions and contributing biomass feedstocks for energy use. Considering all gases, the global technical mitigation potential from agriculture (excluding fossil fuel offsets from biomass) by 2030 is estimated to be ca. 5500–6000 Mt CO 2 ‐eq. yr −1 . Economic potentials are estimated to be 1500–1600, 2500–2700 and 4000–4300 Mt CO 2 ‐eq. yr −1 at carbon prices of up to $ US 20, 50 and 100 t CO 2 ‐eq. −1 , respectively. The value of the global agricultural GHG mitigation at the same three carbon prices is $ US 32 000, 130 000 and 420 000 million yr −1 , respectively. At the E uropean level, early estimates of soil carbon sequestration potential in croplands were ca. 200 Mt CO 2 yr −1 , but this is a technical potential and is for geographical E urope as far east as the U rals. The economic potential is much smaller, with more recent estimates for the EU 27 suggesting a maximum potential of ca. 20 Mt CO 2 ‐eq. yr −1 . The UK is small in global terms, but a large part of its land area (11 Mha) is used for agriculture. Agriculture accounts for about 7% of total UK GHG emissions. The mitigation potential of UK agriculture is estimated to be ca. 1–2 Mt CO 2 ‐eq. yr −1 , accounting for less than 1% of UK total GHG emissions.
In the previous volume of English Heritage Historical Review Richard Hewlings published 22 newly discovered architectural drawings of Rufford Abbey and Ollerton Hall in Nottinghamshire. These drawings were the remainder of a collection, of which another part had formed the basis of my article on the history of Rufford Abbey in an earlier volume of English Heritage Historical Review. The newly discovered drawings illustrate the two houses at only one period in that history, the period during which they were both owned by Sir George Savile, 8th Baronet. But they show internal arrangements and a principal (west) fac¸ade which appear to date from the 17th century; neither of these had been known at the time of writing my article. Mr Hewlings did not discuss the newly revealed evidence for the internal arrangements, and he concluded that the ornamental features of the west fac¸ade suggested a date in the 1630s. He thought that the drawings were surveys, not proposals, and speculated that they might have been intended for publication.The present article considers the internal arrangements in more depth; it suggests a later date for the west fac¸ade; and it demonstrates that the drawings include proposals for changes to both houses and are therefore not just surveys.
Abstract Ecuador has committed to climate change mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic activities, including livestock production. This sector can also contribute to mitigation by increasing carbon sequestration and storage capacity through increasing tree coverage. Although feasible, tree cover expansion would require agricultural land, creating a conflict with food production, thus appropriate areas need to be selected, and the impacts on livestock production quantified. Following water protection legislation and soil protection guidelines, we use a combination of measurements on 100 farms with land cover datasets to identify suitable areas for increasing tree coverage in livestock landscapes. Land cover classification was performed in 2 km areas around 100 livestock farms in the coastal and Amazon regions in Ecuador. Riparian zones were identified following legislation and steepland pastures identified from a slope map. Pasture in riparian areas or steeplands (slope > 15%) were considered suitable for increasing tree coverage by restoration or silvopastoral systems (SPS). The impact of forest/silvopastoral on biomass production was quantified. Overall, 855 km of rivers were studied, between 1–18% of riparian areas were classified as pastures, whilst from the 85992 ha included in the land cover classification, 41668 ha were identified as steepland, 1–28% of steepland was covered by pastures. We estimate that steepland pasture conversion into forest could offset 1.8–10% of Ecuador’s annual GHG emissions from the agricultural sector, but its impacts could represent a decrease > 50% of pasture biomass production at landscape level. Transformation of riparian and steepland pastures into SPS, could deliver important carbon sequestration, with a reduction in pasture biomass production of less than 20%.
Since 1997, the EuroSOMNET project, funded by the EU-ENRICH programme, has assembled a metadatabase, and separate experimental databases, of European long-term experiments that investigate changes in soil organic matter. In this paper, we describe the WWW-based metadatabase, which is a product of this project. The database holds detailed records of 110 long-term soil organic matter experiments, giving a wide geographical coverage of Europe, and includes experiments from the European part of the former Soviet Union, many of which have not been available previously. For speed of access, records are stored as hyper-text mark-up language (HTML) files. In this paper, we describe the metadatabase, the experiments for which records are held, the information stored about each experiment, and summarize the main characteristics of these experiments. Details from the metadatabase have already been used to examine regional trends in soil organic matter in Germany and eastern Europe, to construct and calibrate a regional statistical model of humus balance in Russia, to examine the effects of climatic conditions on soil organic matter dynamics, to estimate the potential for carbon sequestration in agricultural soils in Europe, and to test and improve soil organic matter models. The EuroSOMNET metadatabase provides information applicable to a wide range of agricultural and environmental questions and can be accessed freely via the EuroSOMNET home page at URL: http://www.iacr.bbsrc.ac.uk/aen/eusomnet/index.htm .
Abstract This study aimed to determine the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption of sugarcane farms in Karvir, India, and the potential reductions achieved by switching to diammonium phosphate (DP) fertilizer instead of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) fertilizer, and by using hydropower electricity instead of diesel for energy requirements. We employed the Cool Farm Tool to evaluate the aforementioned issues. The research incorporated data from 15 farms, agricultural centers, sugarcane industries, and laboratory analyses. The findings indicated that the existing output of 740,000 metric tons of sugarcane from 8500 hectares y −1 resulted in total greenhouse gas emissions of 79 kilotons of CO 2 eq annually. Hydropower generation demonstrated a 27% (average) decrease in emissions compared to diesel ( p < 0.01). Furthermore, DP exhibited a decline of 12% on average in emissions in comparison to NPK. We categorized GHG emissions from sources such as residue, soil fertilizer, energy consumption, cattle dung, pesticides, and off‐farm transportation, with CO 2 being the most significant, followed by CH 4 and N 2 O. The outputs show the necessity for low‐emission and energy‐efficient alternatives to crop residue burning, a shift to hydropower instead of diesel, and a transition from NPK to DP when feasible.
