Greenhouse gas emissions from sheep excreta deposited onto tropical pastures in Kenya

Nano-Food Farming Approaches to Mitigate Heat Stress under Ongoing Climate Change: A Review

“…On the other hand, greenhouse gas balances are important components of the global carbon and nitrogen cycles [7]. These gases can be absorbed or emitted by lakes [52], oceans [53], livestock [54][55][56], agricultural and agroforestry systems [55,57], natural terrestrial ecosystems [57,58], and soils [7,55,59]. The main sources of GHGs are CO 2 (74%), CH 4 (17%), and N 2 O (9%) (Figure 3; [60]).…”

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Cattle Enclosures in Semi-Arid Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of a Rangeland in South-Central Kenya

“…Moisture increases the connectivity between soil microorganisms and their substrates, thereby increasing microbial activity (Moyano et al, 2013). Consequently, several studies have reported an increase of soil N 2 O flux after rainfall and rewetting events in tropical pastures, particularly after manure deposition (Pelster et al, 2016;Scholes et al, 1997;Wachiye et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2024). Regarding effects of moisture and seasonality on boma N 2 O emissions, N 2 O emissions increased in the wet season only in inactive but not in active bomas.…”

“…This can lead to significant underestimation of manure GHG emissions from SSA, as has also been stated by Butterbach-Bahl et al (2020) who estimated that active and abandoned bomas from cattle alone contribute 5% to total N 2 O emissions from the African continent. Considering that bomas from other livestock, particularly sheep, goats, and camels, are also common in pastoral systems and can be GHG emission hotspots (Zhu et al, 2024), and that livestock numbers in SSA are growing, it is critical that active and inactive bomas be included in national GHG inventories to reduce current uncertainties in anthropogenic GHG emission sources and to better explain rising atmospheric N 2 O and CH 4 concentrations (Jackson et al, 2020;Wells et al, 2018). This can be achieved by including bomas and similar livestock enclosures as manure management category in the animal activity data collection for GHG inventories (Leitner et al, 2020), or by using novel techniques such as satellite-based remote sensing to map bomas from space (Vrieling et al, 2022).…”

“…The accumulation of large quantities of manure in such bomas renders them GHG emission hotspots with the potential to contribute largely to total non-CO 2 GHG emissions in pastoral systems (Butterbach-Bahl et al, 2020;Carbonell et al, 2021;Mgalula et al, 2021). Although there are some studies on GHG emissions from livestock manure in SSA (Brümmer et al, 2008;Leitner et al, 2021;Pelster et al, 2016;Zhu et al, 2021bZhu et al, , 2020bZhu et al, , 2018, to our knowledge only two have included in situ measurements of GHG emissions from bomas in SSA (Butterbach-Bahl et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2024). Neither of these studies measured emissions for more than short field campaigns.…”

“…During that time, they drop their faeces in the vicinity of the boma, which provides input of C, N and moisture from urine to soil microorganisms, thereby promoting CO 2 and N 2 O emissions. Zhu et al (2024) reported an increase in GHG emissions in the vicinity of sheep bomas compared to background savanna emissions in Kenya. In addition, fresh dung contains entrapped enteric CH 4 and viable methanogens, which leads to short-lived CH pulses after dung deposition on grasslands (Zhu et al, 2021b(Zhu et al, , 2018.…”