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ON ESTIMATING AGRICULTURE'S NET CONTRIBUTION TO ATMOSPHERIC CARBON
Citation:
Jackson, R. AND IV. ON ESTIMATING AGRICULTURE'S NET CONTRIBUTION TO ATMOSPHERIC CARBON. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/J-92/275 (NTIS PB92217165), 1992.
Description:
Fossil fuel combustion, chlorofluorocarbon releases, and agricultural activities (including deforestation) are the primary anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases. Of the three sources, agriculture is the only one that also has a sink capacity. Thus, an accounting of the net carbon (C) flux is required to evaluate agriculture's contribution and to determine the opportunities for emissions mitigation through changes in agricultural practices. ommon data sets and a standard accounting method are required to perform country-by-country net C analyses. his research used agricultural census data to determine that U.S. agriculture removed 1.3 Pg of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, in 1987, in the plants that it produced. he turnover times and the fate of this c were not ascertained. he research also showed that 6.4 Tg of methane was emitted from live U.S. agricultural animals. et flux was computed, but is incomplete because rice methane, plant and animal waste methane and carbon dioxide, and soil-atmosphere fluxes could not be estimated from the census data. dditionally, agriculture's net contribution to atmospheric C was found to depend critically on the boundaries of the analysis.
