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| June 2010: Healthcare | | October 2011 | Disseminating science, research and technology GHG- EUROPE Greenhouse gas management in European land use systems

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Page 1: Ghg europe leaflet-reduced

| June 2010: Healthcare | | October 2011 |

Disseminating science, research and technology

GHG-EUROPEGreenhouse gas management in

European land use systems

Page 2: Ghg europe leaflet-reduced

Approaches to climate change in Europe have often focused on a single ecosystem type or land

use sector, but a major new research project is integrating data streams to analyse the greenhouse

gases (GHGs) balance. Dr Annette Freibauer highlights the project’s achievements to date

Integrating Europe’sterrestrial climate science

Could you outline the project’s main objectives?

GHG-Europe seeks to quantify the annual to decadal variability of all three major GHG – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – in terrestrial ecosystems in Europe. We want to separate the responses of GHG fl uxes to the variability in natural and anthropogenic drivers. It is important to know which part of the GHG balance can be managed and which part is driven by climate variability. Moreover, the most sensitive and vulnerable carbon pools and GHG processes and the associated risks of positive feedbacks with climate change in the 21st Century will be identifi ed. The fi nal output of the GHG-Europe project will be an assessment of the impact of post-2012 strategies and policies on future carbon pools and GHG fl uxes in Europe, which will also include economic and societal aspects.

By what means will GHG-Europe improve the knowledge necessary for the prediction of terrestrial carbon and GHG budgets across Europe?

Our predictive capacity relies on the degree of mechanistic understanding as to how ecosystem processes react to changing pressures and interacting drivers and how much of this knowledge is incorporated in the carbon cycle and GHG models. GHG-Europe is fully exploiting the available data streams by data synthesis and integration of observations and experiments from past and ongoing projects. We are fi lling gaps in knowledge and data by targeted measurements and detailed studies of land management impacts on GHG fl uxes in regions with specifi c transitions of land use type and management intensity developing response functions from the data synthesis to quantify hotspots and hot moments of GHG emissions which are likely to be inadequately represented in widely applied carbon cycle and GHG models. Finally,

we will be validating and improving a wide range of sectoral models of agriculture and forestry, generic ecosystem models and data-driven approaches with the observations and response functions.

What observations are considered when creating the models and how wide ranging are the sites?

Measurements from more than 40 GHG fl ux measurement stations distributed across all European climatic regions and ecosystems are recorded in the GHG-Europe database. Many more additional fl ux data are integrated from previous European projects such as CarboEurope and NitroEurope and national efforts. Together with spatial data on climate, soil and land management they provide the basis for model validation and integrated assessment.

We will assess the future vulnerability of carbon pools and risks of positive feedbacks in the climate-carbon system. This is achieved through novel fi ngerprinting techniques to identify critical drivers and situations, scenario analyses with biophysical models and the

integration of feedbacks with socioeconomic changes and EU climate and land use policies.

Can you explain how GHG-Europe quantifi es the annual to decadal variability of the carbon and GHG budgets for terrestrial ecosystems?

GHG-Europe will make a step change in the quantifi cation of the European carbon and GHG budget in robustness, detail, comprehensiveness and consistency in time, spatial scales and across ecosystems. This will be achieved via a systematic, fully integrated approach that combines multi-year, multi-site observations, a series of models with different complexity and process coverage. The models are validated against the observations and are driven by a new, comprehensive, temporally- and spatially-consistent set of driver fi elds for the period 1900-2010, and up to 2100 in scenario mode. Uncertainties are systematically quantifi ed and attributed to error types and error propagation through measurements, space scales and model parameterisation.

What do you hope this project will achieve in terms of impacting policy making?

The project results will provide quantitative and qualitative new insights for a better foundation of decisions in the international climate policy negotiations. GHG-Europe will provide the scientifi c basis for ‘factoring out’ natural variability and human management effects on the GHG balance, which is at the heart of the international climate negotiations for the post-Kyoto regime. Thus, we will quantify the possible contribution of agriculture and forestry to mitigate GHGs. The results will also allow robust assessment of the consequences of political choices in the post-2012 negotiations regarding baseline methods and accounting rules for C stock changes in the LULUCF sector.

CHAMBER MEASUREMENTS (N2O, CH

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Towards sustainable management of the

carbon cycleLevels of GHG emissions in Europe are constantly in fl ux because human and natural processes drive the complex eco-dynamics of the continent. GHG-Europe is a multidisciplinary project designed to help resolve this urgent question

84 PER CENT of the European landmass is used for agriculture and timber production. Used in this way, it has absorbed 13 per cent of fossil fuel emissions over the past decade; this net carbon ‘sink’ is almost entirely mitigated, however, by nitrous oxide and methane emissions from agriculture. The terrestrial biosphere, therefore, represents a complex interplay between greenhouse gas (GHG) sinks and sources. As climate change takes effect, this balance will become increasingly complicated: growing demand for food and bioenergy will increase the production of GHGs, and increasing timber cutting will reduce this GHG sink, yet the terrestrial biosphere will remain the strongest mechanism we have for absorbing emissions. Quantifying how this interplay operates, and assessing to what extent GHG fl uxes can be managed, will become ever more vital. GHG-Europe is a consortium of European climate change scientists which seeks to improve understanding of how GHGs are affected by natural and anthropogenic drivers, to assist the management of European ecosystems in our changing climate.

According to the accounting rules of the Kyoto Protocol, GHG emissions from managed land are either treated as natural or human induced

and have to be accounted for. However, in reality, soil, climate, land use and management have a complex interrelationship as the roots of biological processes that produce or absorb emissions. Project Coordinator of GHG-Europe, Dr Annette Freibauer, observes the complexity of the issue at the heart of the research fi eld:

“Disentangling how much of the observed GHG fl uxes are directly human induced by land use and management, indirectly human induced by atmospheric nitrogen deposition, the CO

2

increase in the atmosphere or climate change, and how much originates from the natural ‘background’ processes remains one of the most challenging research questions”. The GHG-Europe project aims to address this complicated line of enquiry with new research methodologies that will attribute GHG fl uxes to their drivers and assess how much of this fl ux is human-induced. Ultimately, the task is to determine how, and to what degree, the carbon cycle and GHG emissions in terrestrial ecosystems can be managed. Freibauer explains the aims of the consortium, which involves scientists from more than 40 European research institutions: “The objective is to generate the knowledge base

for decisions on how to manage ecosystems to meet the growing demand for food, feed and bioenergy and at the same time to sustain ecosystem carbon stocks and minimise GHG emissions,’ she underlines.

A COMPREHENSIVEAND INTEGRATIVE APPROACH

The project will use measurements from more than 100 continental stations, distributed across all European climatic regions, to assess the contribution of different land uses to the sinks and sources of the three most signifi cant GHGs – carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. The consortium’s scientists combine long-term measurements with new initiatives to observe emissions in areas which have been little-researched to date. The team is studying Mediterranean shrublands which frequently face damage by fi re – a situation likely to worsen with climate change – along with the heavily under-researched forests of Eastern Europe. Intensive research projects in Finland and the Alps have been established to observe the effects of climate change on Northern latitude and alpine ecosystems. Europe’s peatlands are another crucial territory: as the largest carbon reservoir in the European biosphere, they are

SONIC

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GHG-EUROPE

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INTELLIGENCE

GHG-EuropeGREENHOUSE GAS MANAGEMENT IN EUROPEAN LAND USE SYSTEMS

OBJECTIVES

To improve understanding and capacity for predicting the European terrestrial carbon and greenhouse gas budget.

PARTNERS

vTI, Germany • LSCE-CEA/CNRS, France • IIASA, Austria • MPI-BGC, Germany • UNIABDN, UK • UNITUS, Italy • VUA, The Netherlands • SDLO, The Netherlands • NERC, UK • ETH, Switzerland • ICAS, Romania • INRA, France • PULS, Poland • HWST, Germany • UA, Belgium • CEAM, Spain • UHEL, Finland • BFW, Austria • FEM, Italy • DTU, Denmark • ECN, The Netherlands • EFI, Finland • FMI, Finland • JR, Austria • APB, Italy • RUG, The Netherlands • SLU, Sweden • SYKE, Finland • UCD, Ireland • FLD-UCPH, Denmark • UIBK, Austria • UNIBO, Italy • UGR, Spain • WUR, The Netherlands • UNIUD, Italy • UHEI-IUP, Germany • CNR, Italy • CTFC, Spain • UCLM, Spain • CNRM, France • PIK, Germany

FUNDING

EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) – contract no. 244122

CONTACT

Dr Annette FreibauerProject Coordinator

Johann Heinrich von Thuenen Institute of Agricultural Climate ResearchBundesallee 50D-38116 BraunschweigGermany

T +49 531 596 2634E [email protected]

www.ghg-europe.eu

ANNETTE FREIBAUER is vice head of the vTI-Institute of Agricultural Climate Research. Her research focuses on soil carbon and GHG dynamics in different land use systems (agriculture/forestry). She is a member of the IPCC and advises on policies regarding greenhouse gas mitigation in the agricultural and forestry sector.

highly vulnerable to climate change and land management impacts, yet existing information is very uncertain due to poor data integration and lack of ecosystem models. GHG-Europe aims to improve knowledge of these critical areas by synthesising and amending existing research activities in natural, managed and restored peatlands across Europe.

A major concern of the GHG-Europe project is this integration of existing projects and climate models, since previous estimates of the European GHG balance have tended to concentrate on either carbon or nitrogen and often only one ecosystem type or land use sector. Freibauer explains the consortium’s approach: “There is no single methodology to quantify GHG fl uxes at all relevant spatial and temporal scales. Only an integrative, comprehensive approach that combines the advantages of all approaches leads to robust annual to decadal GHG balances from ecosystem level to the European continent”. The project will analyse a wealth of experimental data, long-term observations of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane fl uxes, meteorological observations and land use information, using a range of advanced data mining techniques and state-of-the-art modelling approaches. It synergises with existing European projects such as NitroEurope IP, which analyses nitrogen and nitrous oxide budgets, CARBO-Extreme which looks at the effects of climate variability and extremes particularly on soil carbon, and CC-TAME which develops tools for assessing EU policy effects on land use.

GHG-Europe follows a strict systematic protocol to unite and harmonise data, and will provide the fullest-possible picture to date of the European biosphere’s balance of GHGs. Knowledge sharing is the key, according to Freibauer: “The intensive integration of the GHG-Europe project with researchers outside the project and the readiness of the European scientists to share data, analysis tools and models, is a real strength”.

A project with such an ambitious remit – in both the scale and the integrated nature of its approach – is naturally not without its challenges. Translating local observations to continental scales is one such challenge, as Freibauer observes: “Scaling site observations to regions or continents, eg. with the help of remote sensing and models, requires a careful analysis of their representativeness for these larger areas. Particularly important is the spatial scale of coherence in the error of the model used for upscaling: depending on this scale, errors can

either cancel out when integrating over large scales, or they contribute to large-scale biases”. The GHG-Europe project uses an integrated approach to consistently upscale from site to regional to continental scale, and is developing a methodology to quantify this error in upscaling and downscaling.

THE CARBON CYCLEMANAGEMENT CHALLENGE

The ultimate goal of the GHG-Europe project is to determine how, and to what degree, the carbon cycle and GHG emissions in terrestrial ecosystems can be managed. The management challenge is to keep GHG fl uxes across ecosystems, regions and continents in balance, and to undertake climate change mitigation strategies where appropriate. Freibauer explains what these might be: “In croplands and grasslands soil carbon can be managed by adequate amounts of organic amendments, residue management and in particular by maintaining permanent grasslands which sequester soil carbon. Sustainable forest management ensures high carbon stocks over forest rotation periods. Substitution effects, eg. when wood replaces energy-intensive products or fossil energy, can override the mitigation potential of carbon storage in forest ecosystems, particularly at longer time-scales”. Clearly, the land use sector must contribute its share to reducing GHG emissions, but the biodynamics of ecological systems interact with climate change in ways that are currently not fully understood; as Freibauer observes: “This makes climate change mitigation measures in agriculture, forestry and other land uses more complicated and uncertain than in any other sector”. In attempting to improve our understanding of how natural and anthropogenic drivers contribute to GHG emissions – and in elucidating the ways in which ecosystems respond to them – the GHG-Europe project will help to clarify that uncertainty.

PEATLAND SOIL PROFILE

EXAMPLE OF A SOIL CORE FROM A CLAYEY SITE