Improving country-specific nitrous oxide emission factors from agricultural soil management
Participants at the regional workshop. Photo: Natcha, LEAD
To design and implement greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation strategies and low emissions development strategies, representatives from seven Asian countries met recently to develop country-level roadmaps for emission factor development and improvement.
A regional workshop on “Improvement and development of emission factor for nitrous oxide (N2O) from agricultural soil management” saw participants from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam focus on:
- Applying the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines and methodologies for developing country-specific emission factor for N2O emissions from agricultural soil management;
- Understanding how to conduct actual measurements of N2O from agricultural soil management, including data analysis and calculations;
- Identifying potential publications or other sources of country-specific data needed to develop emission factors; and
- Identifying on-going national, regional and international projects/initiatives on N2O measurements that could foster future networking and collaboration on emission factor development.
Emission factor is defined as the coefficient of GHG emissions or removals per unit of human activity. Country-specific emission factors help improve the accuracy of GHG emission estimates.
Day 1 of the workshop covered N2O emission factor; IPCC guidelines and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) GHG inventory system. On
day 2, participants were trained on GHG sampling techniques through manual and automated chamber system, sampling protocol, laboratory analysis and emission factor calculation. On day 3, participants visited the field research site, where manual and automated GHG sampling protocols were demonstrated and the groups undertook field GHG sampling. On the final day, participants from each country developed roadmaps for emission factor improvement.
Resource persons included, Dr Amnat Chidthaisong and Dr Sirintornthep Towprayoon, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand; Dr Phongthep Hanpattanakit, Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand; Dr Tek Sapkota, CIMMYT-India; Dr Pradipta Ranjan Pradhan, ICRISAT-India. This workshop is aligned to the GHG emissions work lead by Dr Pradhan in Innovation Systems for the Drylands and supported by the CCAFS South Asia regional program.
ICRISAT research program, Innovation Systems for the Drylands, hosted the four-day workshop, which was supported by the USAID Low Emissions Asian Development (LEAD) Program, during 14-17 June at ICRISAT-India. A total of 28 participants attended the workshop representing academics, researchers and government officials. The workshop was a combination of guided lectures, practical exercises and a field visit to understand data requirements and to perform field measurements for emission factor estimation.
