Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trends and Mitigation Measures in Australian Agriculture Sector—A Review

Abstract

Agriculture is an important source of greenhouse gas emissions. It is one of the economic sectors that impacts both directly and indirectly towards climate change which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. There has been a continuous trend of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions reduction technologies, but any step taken in this direction must not negatively affect farm productivity and economics. For the agriculture sector to achieve reduced GHG emission, climate-smart activities and improved food security will be needed for this sector to become a climate-smart landscape. Climate-smart technologies are effective at targeting inputs to the fields, helping to lower greenhouse gas emissions. This article explores the key sources of carbon emissions within the agriculture sector and reviews efficient ways to GHG emission via Smart Farming technology. Based on the public archive GHG datasets, we have found that livestock farming is the largest GHG emission sector among other agricultural sectors and responsible for 70% of the total emission. Besides, we also show that Queensland is the largest agricultural GHG contributor compared to other states and territories. The article also captures any possible sources within smart farming that may contribute to carbon emissions and suggest ways to reduce GHG emissions. Besides, an Australian-based best management practice approach is discussed to review the emissions reduction strategy based on climate-specific technology to help the farmers and other stakeholders take environmentally-friendly agricultural decisions.

Conceptualising the Circular Economy Potential of Construction and Demolition Waste: An Integrative Literature Review

“…Furthermore, by conceptualising the CEPCDR from a holistic perspective, the lifecycle impact of materials (cradle-to-cradle boundaries or C2C) can be mitigated. The latter is comprised of the materially embodied carbon and the carbon dioxide emissions from transportation and treatment [53,95]. To mitigate the C2C emissions-specifically, those related to the transportation and treatment phase of CDW materials-the CEPCDR integrates the spatial dimension of "geographical proximity".…”

“…Thereby, the CO 2 emissions released from the 3Re process are significantly lower than that those from landfilling, thus contributing to the mitigation of global warming, which affects the construction industry. The latter is of great importance to the Australian government, which must reduce the carbon footprint of its major industrial sectors, including the construction sector, by 26% to 28% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels [95].…”

Applications of Internet of Things and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Smart Agriculture: A Review

“…Moreover, the qualities of crop yield and environmental impacts from agriculture have been improved with these intelligent technologies. Since some of the main characteristics of IoT and UAVbased smart farming are [21][22][23]: a. Field monitoring: Smart agriculture aims to reduce crop waste by improved surveillance, precise data collection and data analysis.…”

A Review of Applications and Communication Technologies for Internet of Things (IoT) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Based Sustainable Smart Farming

“…The goal of sustainable farming is to increase agricultural yield to meet the food demand of 10 billion people by 2050, as reported by World Resources Institutes (WRI) in 2018 [1] and smart farming is the inevitable approach to reach this goal. Smart farming is defined as the farming system where smart and cutting-edge technologies are integrated with traditional farming approaches to improve quality and quantity of agricultural production, while at the same time lowering the inputs significantly [2]. The aim of smart farming is to improve productivity, increase yields and profitability and reduce the environmental footprint by utilizing different techniques such as efficient irrigation, targeted and precise use of pesticides and fertilizers for crops, etc.…”

“…As a consequence, UAV and IoT based technologies facilitate adequate use of resources such as water, pesticides or agro-chemicals. Additionally, these smart technologies have proven to increase the quality of crop yield [4] and reduce environmental footprint from agricultural sector [2]. Some major features of IoT and UAV based smart farming includes, but are not limited to, the following [5]:…”