Welcome

Who’s Counting is the quarterly newsletter of the Inventories and Nationally Determined Contributions Network (I&NDC Network). We summarise scientific progress, opportunities, resources and events related to national agriculture inventory development, national agriculture climate targets, and international inventory capability-building activities.

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In Who's counting this quarter

The I&NDC Network welcomes two new co-leads; two databases of emission factors and parameters for manure CH₄ and soil N₂O are publicly available and continually seeking data contributions; New Zealand scientists communicate new findings from research on mapping and managing N₂O emissions from urine patches; and the I&NDC Network held the first successful meeting of National Agriculture Inventory Compilers in January. More 2022 Network events and activities to be announced, please subscribe to stay notified!

Spotlight: The I&NDC Network welcomes Dr Mai Van Trinh (Viet Nam) and Dr Natalie Doran-Browne (Australia) as new co-leads.

Best Practices: 

• DATAMAN-MELS
• The Global N₂O Database
• Mapping and managing urine patches to reduce N₂O emissions

Success stories:

• FACCE ERA-GAS: Bringing 6 years of research into action for climate

• UNFCCC GHG-MI e-courses Inventory Training: 4th round opening June 2022

People in action:

• National Agriculture Inventory Compiler Meeting 2022, I&NDC Network

• 2022 GRA Council Meeting

Events and Opportunities:

• Invitation to attend or present at the New Zealand 2022 Agriculture GHG Inventory Workshop – 11-13 April
• Call for Co-Presenters for GHG mitigations and costs for cropping – 21 March
• Transforming agriculture through resilient and low emission practices – 15-16 March
• Special Issue on Greenhouse Gas Mitigation in Agriculture

• Greenhouse gas measurements in underrepresented areas of the world

Resources:

• e-learning courses for Agriculture GHG Inventory Compilers
• Webpage and Help Desk for GHG Inventory Issues for Developing Countries
• Guidance and reporting recommendations for converting emission units to standardised emission factors
• The static chamber method for measuring GHG in Latin America
• Denitrification in biogeochemical models using N₂, N₂O and CO₂
• SEACRIFOG: An African greenhouse gas observation system
• Simulating effects on yield and CH₄ in Thai paddy rice
• Diet and farm management N₂O emissions on dairy farms
• Carbon sequestration with long-term management practices 
• Philippines AWD: mapping CH₄ mitigation potential in rice

We welcome suggested content for the May 2022 Issue of Who's Counting. Please email INDC.GRA@gmail.com or contact one of the network co-leads (emails included at the end of the newsletter).

Spotlight

New I&NDC Network Leadership

We are pleased to welcome two new co-leads to the I&NDC Network, Dr Mai Van Trinh from Viet Nam and Dr Natalie Doran-Browne from Australia. We would like to express our gratitude to Dr Richard Eckard for his immense contribution to leadership of the Network since our beginning in 2017, and will continue to carry forward many of the plans we established together under the new leadership.

Dr. Mai Van Trinh: Recently Trinh has worked as a National Consultant on GHG emission reduction in fertiliser and as the National Agriculture consultant on Viet Nam’s NDC. Trinh also led work on developing Tier 2 emission factors for rice and some upland crops, estimating ruminant enteric methane emissions, and acted as an international verifier for the Viet Nam’s AgResults emissions reduction pilot, working with UNDP, ILRI, CCAFs and IRRI. 

Dr. Natalie Doran-Browne: Natalie has over 15 years research experience addressing climate change issues in the agricultural industry. Her expertise is in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, calculating the carbon balance of farms and working towards carbon neutral farming, with a particular focus on livestock systems. She has worked with a wide range of computer simulation models to explore farm production issues around climate, economic outcomes and the carbon sequestration potential of various farming systems. Recently, Natalie has been working with Fiji to develop the national greenhouse gas inventory systems with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector to help meet its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).

Best Practices

DATAMAN-MELS

DATAMAN

The purpose of DATAMAN was to better understand the extent of influence of the key variables that affect N₂O, NH₃ and CH₄ emissions from managed manure. The Project developed refined emission factors and algorithms suitable for Tier 2 national GHG inventories in developed and developing countries, with application in two case studies of the New Zealand and Chilean national agriculture GHG inventories.

Publications from DATAMAN include:

1. DATAMAN: A global database of nitrous oxide and ammonia emission factors for excreta deposited by livestock and land-applied manure (2021). https://doi.org/10.1002/jeq2.20186

2. Ammonia and nitrous oxide emission factors for excreta deposited by livestock and land-applied manure (2021). https://doi.org/10.1002/jeq2.20259 

 For the DATAMAN Website, Emission factor database and Tool, see link below.

MELS - Mitigating GHG Emissions from Livestock Systems

The MELS Project builds on the field emission database (both publications above) from DATAMAN by developing functions to estimate manure-derived emissions and describe emission drivers for housing and manure storage. The purpose of MELS is to better describe the key variables affecting GHG and N emissions from manure management at the housing and storage levels. Look out for a publication on the housing and manure storage emissions factor database (due mid-2022).

The Global Nitrous Oxide Database

Previously, a lack of access to daily observational data has limited modelling efforts, analysis and understanding of the science behind N₂O emissions. In order to support better estimates of agricultural N₂O emissions as well as scientific understanding of the production and mitigation of N₂O emissions, the Global N₂O Database was created by and is maintained by Rich Conant (NREL & Professor in the Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Department at CSU) and Chris Dorich. The intention is for the database to serve as a repository for the hundreds of sites globally that contribute N₂O emissions data (Dorich et al. 2020). 

The Global N₂O Database provides a coordinated, sustainable infrastructure that gives researchers data access, and allows for further data contributions. So far, data for 71 experimental sites from 5 continents have been contributed to the database, with over half a million rows of daily data, including many datasets from GRA partners.

The first version of the Global N₂O Database has been published as an open database with the Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) (see link below). Version 2 will be updated mid 2022 and is currently still open for data submission. It is expected that ~50 more datasets will be submitted in the coming months. A 2022 EDI Fellow will support publishing those data. 

I&NDC Network members are encouraged to get in touch with the database authors at Chris.Dorich@colostate.edu with possible dataset additions. For more guidance on N₂O emission measurement please see the 2020 Global Research Alliance N₂O Chamber Methodology Guidelines.

Mapping and managing urine patches to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from grazed pastures

Authors: Jiafa Luo, Surinder Saggar

NZAGRC, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research (MWLR), Pastoral Robotics Limited and AgResearch in New Zealand are exploring targeted management of urine patches deposited directly onto pasture by grazing animals, which is the primary source of direct and indirect N₂O emissions in these systems (from deposition of volatilised ammonia and leached nitrate). 

This work is important to determine cost savings from potentially applying significantly less inhibitor technologies to targeted areas, as opposed to applying the treatment over large unaffected areas. Critical factors to estimate emissions from urine patches were also determined. Findings supported existing scientific knowledge in this field that simulated urine patches (often uniformly wetted) do not correctly emulate natural dispersion of urine patches and thus provided new insights for better estimation of N₂O emissions from grazing animals.

A related and remaining question is addressed in current New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre funded research “On-farm targeted urine patch management”: can the N losses associated with urine-N be efficiently reduced by treating these urine-patches detected within 48 hours of deposition by grazing animals?

Success Stories

FACCE ERA-GAS: Bringing 6 years of research into action for climate

FACCE ERA-GAS recently held a research programme meeting and stakeholder-led policy workshop on research and innovation for transformative change. In the first session, the topics discussed included improvement of IPCC inventory methodology, application of lactic acid bacteria in ruminant diets, and trade-offs associated with different management of crop residues.

The second day consisted of joint panel discussions with stakeholders from the European Commission, COPA-COGECA, SEGES (Denmark) and the Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Network and FACCE ERA-GAS projects answering questions on how best to work together to deliver the agricultural climate targets in Europe. The key messages from the meeting will be distilled into a report to be uploaded on the FACCE ERA-GAS website.

GHG Inventory Training: 4th round of GHG-MI e-courses opening in June 2022, supported by UNFCCC Secretariat

The UNFCCC Secretariat is currently supporting 354 experts from 70 developing countries for the 3rd round of online training and certification via the GHG-MI e-courses on 2006 IPCC guidelines for GHG Inventories of all sectors. 

Sixty-one experts from 47 countries are being supported through the Agriculture sector GHG-MI e-course. A 4th round of online training and certification on the 2006 IPCC guidelines will be launched in June 2022.

Please watch the GHG Support calendar page for the 2022 training announcement (this April / May) if you are interested in applying!

People in Action

Meeting of National Agriculture Inventory Compilers, I&NDC Network, 17 January 2022

On 17 January 2022, the I&NDC Network virtually hosted a meeting of National Agriculture Sector Inventory Compilers. Thirty-five countries were represented by their national agriculture inventory compilers spanning Africa, Europe, LAC, Asia, North America and Oceania.

The objectives of the meeting were to facilitate networking and information exchange, to discuss common issues faced in agriculture inventory compilation and to determine how the Network may best assist participants with these and inventory improvements. Two resources were identified to explore for development by the I&NDC Network:

• brief summary of agricultural sector national inventory methods behind emission calculation, and
• a resource / set of guidelines on capturing mitigations in national level inventories

Please read more about the meeting and access the summary report below.

2022 GRA Council Meeting

The eleventh Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA) Council meeting was hosted online by Chile from 21-23 February 2022. For more information, please refer to the GRA updates web page or email secretariat@globalresearchalliance.org.

Key Outcomes for I&NDC Members:

1. Australia handed over Council Chair to Chile, and Spain accepted the role of Council Vice Chair

2. Six proposed flagship projects of the GRA were endorsed by the GRA Council and are currently seeking data and experts to contribute, I&NDC Network Members are encouraged to contribute – please read more below! The six projects are: i) GHG Mitigation in Cattle Farming, ii) Remote Sensing in Grasslands, iii) Nitrogen Fertiliser Emissions, iv) Feed Additives, v) Hungate Collection 2 and vi) MAC-B.

3. Round 5 of the CLIFF-GRADS Scholarship Programme will be opened later in 2022. I&NDC Network members are encouraged to consider hosting a CLIFF-GRADS student in their institution.

For more information on the Flagship Projects including expertise and data needs, please email the GRA secretariat.

Events and Opportunities

E-learning courses for Agriculture GHG Inventory Compilers

New Zealand has developed three foundational e-learning courses to support people learning to compile national agricultural GHG inventories, or anyone who may wish to increase their knowledge on international climate obligations and emission reporting. The courses are:

• Course 1: Climate change science. Suitable for anyone wanting to improve their understanding of the science behind global warming. 
• Course 2 International climate change policy. Suitable for people wanting to improve their understanding of the agreements behind national climate change negotiations and obligations.
• Course 3: Introduction to GHG accounting, which provides an overview of the science specific to Agricultural GHG emissions and reporting. 

All courses are free but they will require a login so that your progression can be tracked and a certificate gained at the completion of each course. While they are standalone courses, it is assumed that the knowledge in the previous courses is known. The courses will be available on the GRA website lat early April 2022.

Invitation to attend or present at the New Zealand 2022 Agriculture GHG Inventory Workshop, 11 - 13 April

The 2022 New Zealand Agriculture Greenhouse Gas Inventory Workshop which will be held this year on the 11th – 13th of April on Microsoft Teams, hosted by the Ministry for Primary Industries with no attendance fee. Four three hour sessions will be spread over the three days. Abstracts of proposed presentations should be sent to catherine.sangster@mpi.govt.nz by the 15th of March. Please RSVP attendance by the 22nd of March. 

The workshop will focus on recent scientific developments and future research related to the measurements and estimation of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions for national agriculture inventory reporting. The workshop will also include facilitated sessions to discuss future research priorities for the inventory. We invite scientists and researchers to submit research abstracts, which may be in the form of either a short presentation (10-12 min) or a lightning talk (3-5 min) on the following topics:

• agricultural methane / nitrous oxide / soil carbon

• feed and energy requirements

• quantifying the effect of mitigations

• activity data, methods and modelling of agricultural GHG emissions

• farm scale tools and the application of inventory science to GHG emissions measurements.

Call for Co-Presenters for webinar on GHG mitigation strategies and costs for cropping in the USA, Brazil, and Germany, week of 21 March, TBC

The GRA Farm to Regional Scale Integration Network are seeking co-presenters to demonstrate research results for a webinar being planned for the fourth week of March 2022 (21st - 25th). Please email Daniel Tudela at daniel.tudelastaub@thuenen.de for more information. Daniel Tudela, leading the session, will present his research on mitigation costs in the USA (Iowa - corn), Brazil (Paraná - corn), and Germany (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern - wheat). The mitigation strategies assessed focus on nitrogen efficiency and carbon sequestration. Please note any interested co-presenters may present research from any country or crop as long as it is in line with the main topic (mitigation costs in an arable system).

Research Article Submissions: Special Issue on Greenhouse Gas Mitigation in Agriculture

Submission Deadline: 20 May 2022

The Journal Agriculture is seeking manuscript submissions of research on GHGs from agriculture including N₂O originating from soil transformations, CH₄ from animal husbandry and CO₂ from the cultivation of organic soils. GRA researchers have been invited to submit their papers to the journal with a 15% discount of the regular publication fee. Please contact Ms. Miguel Zhou at miguel.zhou@mdpi.com regarding the discount. For more information on this Special Issue and submission guidelines, please visit the link below.

Research Article Submissions: Greenhouse gas measurements in underrepresented areas of the world

Submission Deadline: 24 March 2022

We would like to call your attention to the Research Topic “Greenhouse gas measurements in underrepresented areas of the world” in Frontiers in Soil Science. Please forward this information to those that you think might be interested in this topic. There is a large concentration of efforts for understanding and quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) production and consumption in certain areas of the world (i.e., North America and Europe), while low- and middle-income countries are underrepresented. We encourage the submission of original research articles on the following themes, both from natural and anthropogenic ecosystems:

• Direct discrete or continuous GHG flux measurements at the ecosystem level
• Direct discrete or continuous measurements of soil GHG fluxes
• Direct discrete or continuous measurements of aquatic GHG fluxes (e.g. rices, lakes, water pans)
• Direct discrete or continuous measurements of ecosystem components in laboratory trials (e.g., animals or animal manure)
• Indirect estimations of GHG fluxes and inventories
• Development of emission factors for agricultural activities

Transforming agriculture through resilient and low emission practices – the role of KJWA and the Methane Pledge, 15 - 16 March

This is part of a series of virtual events that aims to provide and enhance understanding of climate policies, pledges and initiatives from the COP26, and their impacts on the push towards resilient and low-emissions landscapes in the Asia-Pacific region. The series aims to:

• Discuss and identify areas and existing best practices to leverage and scale actions as countries ramp up implementation of NDCs and other commitments, prior to COP27, and enhance capacities to do so via partnerships;
• Disseminate information on the outcomes of COP26 relevant to the Asia-Pacific region;
• Discuss sectoral needs, negotiation strategies, highlighting the important role of AFOLU sectors to contribute to country climate pledges including ambitious net-zero targets and the Global Methane Pledge.

Resources

Webpage and Help Desk for GHG Inventory Issues (Agriculture and other sectors) faced by Developing Countries

The GHG Support Unit of the UNFCCC Secretariat is pleased to announce the launch of a new webpage dedicated specially to support all developing countries on GHG inventory related issues. The webpage includes a GHG Help Desk which is a communication platform aiming to provide support to answer your technical questions. In order to get access to the discussion forum, please register your email account with the GHG support unit by contacting GHGCapacityBuilding@unfccc.int. 

The forum is intended for questions about the planning, preparation and management of national GHG inventories, use of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for national GHG inventories, establishing and maintenance of institutional arrangements, the implementation of the reporting requirements for measurement, reporting and verification under the Convention, implementing the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement, and any other GHG inventory related mater. Once registered with the email above, you may access the GHG Help Desk.

For more information on using the GHG Help desk, please see the user guide.

ABSTRACT: “Emissions of ammonia (NH₃), nitrous oxide (N₂O) and methane (CH₄) from livestock production may be measured for different reasons and in consequence reported in a wide range of units. For the purpose of compiling national inventories of emissions of those gases, emissions from buildings and stores usually need to be expressed per animal or as a proportion of nitrogen (N) (NH₃ and N₂O) or volatile solids (VS) (CH₄) excreted or stored. Much of the published data on gaseous emissions from livestock production is not reported in units that can be readily used for inventory compilation. This paper provides guidance for researchers wishing to convert a wide range of emission units into emission factors (EFs) and opens up opportunities for increased use of published data. 

ABSTRACT: “Manual static chamber is one of the most widespread methods for the quantification of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions from agricultural systems. But there are concerns about the reliability of measurements and a necessity to assess the static chambers used in the studies performed in the countries of Latin America. Thus, this study aims to investigate the quality of the characteristics from the static chamber methodology, the confidence level of the GHG measurements, and recommend what should be improved.”

Gas chromatography and isotope-ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) enabled more robust N₂, N₂O and CO₂ data collection, which was used by authors to test the denitrification and decomposition as estimated by the sub-modules of DeNi, Coup and DNDC in two soil types, and concluded that these are not currently able to consistently simulate denitrification and decomposition processes.

The SEACRIFOG Consortium has published a blueprint for environmental research infrastructure in Africa considering what GHG observations are needed and where, costs, e-infrastructure, capacity needs, with the objective of establishing standardised environmental observations across the continent.

Research to inform fertilizer choice and water management practices for Thai rice cultivation with regards to improving rice grain yield and reducing CH₄ emissions suggests that for rain-fed rice cultivation, a combination of fertilizer and manure application with AWD maintained crop yield while reducing GHG emissions. For irrigated systems, manure and AWD are recommended for crop maintenance and reduced GHG emissions in the long term.

ABSTRACT: “The N₂O emissions of 21 dairy farms in Germany were evaluated to determine the feasibility of an estimation of emissions from farm data and the effects of the farm management, along with possible mitigation strategies. Emissions due to the application of different fertilisers, manure storage and grazing were calculated based on equations from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change) and German emission inventory. The dependence of the N₂O emissions on fertiliser type and quantity, cultivated crops and diet composition was assessed via correlation analysis and linear regression

ABSTRACT: “Rice–wheat, an intensive and dominant cropping system occupying 24 million hectares of cultivated land globally, significantly contributes to the global warming potential. Therefore, this review aims to identify the best management practices in the rice–wheat system that lead to C sequestration by improving SOC. These include the use of manure, compost, crop residues, balanced fertilization used conjointly with farmyard manure (FYM), mulch farming, conservation tillage, and inclusion of cover crops. The paper provides a comprehensive review of C pools and sequestration as influenced by long-term management practices under a rice–wheat cropping system.”

ABSTRACT:“This article describes how a model for climatic AWD suitability assessment developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is suited for a national assessment of the Philippines, and country-scale climatic suitability maps for AWD are developed for wet and dry season. Furthermore, how the assessment can be used to estimate potential GHG emission savings is illustrated.”