Development of a Database to Collect Emission Values for Livestock Systems

Abstract

Growing demand for animal products has contributed to an increase in biogeochemical fluxes, leading particularly to gaseous ammonia, methane, and nitrous oxide emissions into the atmosphere. Developing accurate knowledge on the sources and magnitude of gas emissions from the livestock sector is essential to reducing emissions, while meeting other societal expectations, and to implementing effective regulations. To this end, a database called ELFE (ELevage et Facteurs d'Emission; i.e., Livestock and Emission Factors) was recently developed. It currently contains ?5200 gas emission measurements extracted from 345 publications of the international literature published from 1964 to 2018 from 37 countries. One of its innovative aspects is the structured and comprehensive description of both the livestock system and the measurement method associated with emission data. Ammonia emitted by livestock systems represents 40 to 80% of emission values and 45 to 81% of the values concern production systems with slurry, depending on the animal produced. This database will contribute to improved emission factors for national inventories by more thoroughly considering factors influencing emission levels and data quality. It highlights the need for shared and standardized reporting protocols for both the livestock system itself and the measurement conditions, to allow for thorough comparisons and to reduce uncertainty in unit conversions. The database is available online on the Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA) platform (https:// data.inra.fr/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.15454/MHJPYT) and will be updated annually with new gas emissions.

DATAMAN: A global database of nitrous oxide and ammonia emission factors for excreta deposited by livestock and land‐applied manure

“…et al, 2018), ELFE (Vigan et al, 2019), and the 2019 refinement of the 2006 IPCC guidelines (IPCC, 2019). The U.K. studies (Chadwick et al, 2018;Thorman et al, 2020) can be found in the archived data sources of the United Kingdom's Agricultural and Environmental Data Archive (AEDA, 2019), where all relevant N 2 O and NH 3 studies on excreta and manure (27 studies in total) were included in DATAMAN.…”

“…Selection criteria for NH 3 emission studies were: (a) the studies were field based; (b) the NH 3 emissions were measured using micrometeorological methods, aspirated F I G U R E 1 Summary of process for collating data of DATAMAN database and the focus of the current paper. AEDA, Agricultural and Environmental Data Archive (AEDA, 2020); ALFAM2, Ammonia Loss from Field-Applied Manure (Hafner et al, 2018); ELFE, ELevage et Facteurs d'Emission (Vigan et al, 2019) chambers, wind tunnels, or passive sampling techniques; (c) the measurements were conducted for at least 1 d for all manures (except for poultry) and for 7 d or more for poultry manure experiments (due to the slow rate of urea hydrolysis of uric acid present in poultry manure); (d) cumulative NH 3 emissions or EF values were reported; (e) the N treatments were limited to one N source; and (f) activity data on N load were available or could be calculated from information provided. As for N 2 O, a subsequent study will determine the influence of experiment duration on revised NH 3 EF values.…”

“…This quality control process was limited to the entry of data sourced from individual publications, conference papers, or theses. The data obtained from existing databases (i.e., ALFAM2, ELFE, and AEDA) had already undergone a quality control process when they were collated (Hafner et al, 2018;Vigan et al, 2019; R. Thorman, personal communication, 2020). However, data within the final field database were also visually inspected to identify potential errors in data entry.…”

“…Several studies have focused on understanding the variables influencing N 2 O and NH 3 emissions from manure management and identifying possible mitigation strategies (Broucek, 2018;Hafner et al, 2018;Montes et al, 2013;Sajeev, P., Winiwarter, & Amon, 2018). However, few studies focus on the effect of different manure management and livestock systems on emission factors (EFs), which represent the fraction of N applied as manure that is emitted as either N 2 O and NH 3 (IPCC, 2006;Vigan et al, 2019). Emission factors are used in conjunction with activity data (e.g., total amount of manure-N applied to agricultural soils) to calculate gaseous emissions from a specific source, such as land-applied manure.…”

“…The most important gases emitted from livestock production systems are methane (CH 4 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O), and NH 3 (Chadwick et al., 2011; Webb et al., 2005). Both CH 4 and N 2 O contribute directly to global warming; N 2 O also contributes to ozone depletion.…”