Balancing Regional Greenhouse Gas Budgets

Balancing Greenhouse Gas Budgets: Accounting for Natural and Anthropogenic Flows of CO2 and other Trace Gases provides a synthesis of greenhouse gas budgeting activities across the world. Organized in four sections, including background, methods, case studies and opportunities, it is an interdisciplinary book covering both science and policy. All environments are covered, from terrestrial to ocean, along with atmospheric processes using models, inventories and observations to give a complete overview of greenhouse gas accounting. Perspectives presented give readers the tools necessary to understand budget activities, think critically, and use the framework to carry out initiatives. Written by a combination of experts across career stages, presenting an integrated perspective for graduate students and professionals alike Includes sections authored by those involved in both early and later IPCC assessments Provides an interdisciplinary resource that spans many topics and methodologies in oceanic, land and atmospheric processes

This book assesses the current greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring capabilities of Europe, identifies and quantifies the uncertainties involved, and outlines the direction to a continental scale GHG monitoring network. The book uniquely addresses both the methodology of carbon cycle science and the science itself, providing a synthesis of carbon cycle science. The methods included provide the first comprehensive coverage of a full GHG accounting and monitoring system.

The book addresses in a comprehensive way the full greenhouse gases budget of the Italian landscape, focusing on land use and terrestrial ecosystems. In recent years there has been a growing interest in the role of terrestrial ecosystems with regard to the carbon cycle and only recently a regional approach has been considered for its specificity in terms of new methodologies for observations and models and its relevance for national policies on mitigation and adaptation to climate changes. In terms of methods this book describes the role of flux networks and data-driven models, airborne regional measurements of fluxes and specific sectoral approaches related to important components of the human and natural landscapes. There is also a growing need on the part of institutions, agencies and policy stakeholders for new data and analyses enabling them to improve their national inventories of greenhouse gases and their compliance with the UNFCCC process. In this respect the data presented is a basis for a full carbon accounting and available to relevant stakeholders for improvements and/or verification of national inventories. The wealth of research information is the result of a national project, CARBOITALY, which involved 15 Italian institutions and several researchers to provide new data and analyses in the framework of climate policies.

​​This book provides standards and guidelines for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions and removals in smallholder agricultural systems and comparing options for climate change mitigation based on emission reductions and livelihood trade-offs. Globally, agriculture is directly responsible for about 11% of annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and induces an additional 17% through land use change, mostly in developing countries. Farms in the developing countries of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are predominately managed by smallholders, with 80% of land holdings smaller than ten hectares. However, little to no information exists on greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation potentials in smallholder agriculture. Greenhouse gas measurements in agriculture are expensive, time consuming, and error prone, challenges only exacerbated by the heterogeneity of smallholder systems and landscapes. Concerns over methodological rigor, measurement costs, and the diversity of approaches, coupled with the demand for robust information suggest it is germane for the scientific community to establish standards of measurements for quantifying GHG emissions from smallholder agriculture. Standard guidelines for use by scientists, development organizations will help generate reliable data on emissions baselines and allow rigorous comparisons of mitigation options. The guidelines described in this book, developed by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) and partners, are intended to inform anyone conducting field measurements of agricultural greenhouse gas sources and sinks, especially to develop IPCC Tier 2 emission factors or to compare mitigation options in smallholder systems.

The Carbon Balance of Forest Biomes provides an informed synthesis on the current status of forests and their future potential for carbon sequestration. This volume is timely, since convincing models which scale from local to regional carbon fluxes are needed to support these international agreements, whilst criticisms have been levelled at existing empirical approaches. One key question is to determine how well eddy-flux measurements at the stand-level represent regional-scale processes. This may be related to specific management practices (age, plantation, fertilisation) or simple bias in choosing representative sites (ease of access, roughness, proximity to physical barriers). The ecology and regeneration state of temperate, tropical and boreal forests under current climatic conditions are discussed, together with partitioning of photosynthetic and respiratory fluxes from soils and vegetation. The volume considers how to integrate contrasting methodologies, and the latest approaches for scaling from stand to the planetary boundary layer.

In this first comprehensive handbook of the earth's sinks for greenhouse gases, leading researchers from around the world provide an expert synthesis of current understanding and uncertainties. It will be a valuable resource for students, researchers and practitioners in conservation, ecology and environmental studies.

This is the first book to provide measurements of greenhouse gases from both aquatic and terrestrial environments as well as from hydroelectric reservoirs. This monograph not only presents the state-of-the-art techniques for measuring the emissions of greenhouse gases, but also demonstrates the mechanisms or processes leading to the emissions of greenhouse gases. It offers the reader a synthesis of what we understand of GHG emission after 12 years of research in boreal ecosystems, the estimations of gross and net emissions from hydroelectric reservoirs, the impact of hydroelectric reservoirs on climate change, as well as a comparison of the different alternatives for producing energy in relation to GHG emissions.