Grantee Research Project Results

2011 Progress Report: Atmospheric Ammonia Emissions from the Livestock Sector: Development and Evaluation of a Process-based Modeling Approach

EPA Grant Number: R834549
Title: Atmospheric Ammonia Emissions from the Livestock Sector: Development and Evaluation of a Process-based Modeling Approach
Investigators: Adams, Peter
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: May 1, 2010 through April 30, 2014 (Extended to November 30, 2015)
Project Period Covered by this Report: May 1, 2011 through April 30,2012
Project Amount: $483,827
RFA: Novel Approaches to Improving Air Pollution Emissions Information (2009) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Air Quality and Air Toxics , Air

Objective:

The objective of this project is to build an improved atmospheric ammonia emissions inventory for U.S. livestock by developing and evaluating a process-based approach that accounts for regional and temporal variations in weather and farming practices. We will accomplish this by pursuing the following goals and tasks:

Develop process-based models of ammonia emissions from beef cattle, swine, and chickens that account for differences in farming practices as well as seasonal and diurnal variability
Assess the uncertainty in livestock ammonia emissions and suggest sources of data that can help reduce this uncertainty
Test process-based models at the farm scale against NAEMS multi-year measurements
Develop a revised national emissions inventory based on these results
Test the performance of the revised national emissions inventory in a CTM against ambient measurements of NH₃ and NH₄⁺ concentrations and deposition
Assess the sensitivity of inorganic PM_2.5 to NH₃, SO₂, and NO_x emissions under current and future policy regimes

Progress Summary:

The goals of the project have not changed and the project is on schedule. In the past year, the project has made good progress. The student working on the project, Alyssa Moore, has preliminary results for a process-based farm emissions model (FEM) for beef cows. These are discussed in more detail below in the results section (Section 5). Alyssa will present a poster at the annual conference of the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) in October 2012 with a preliminary beef cow emissions inventory for the United States.

Farming practices have been reviewed, and a FEM for beef cows has been developed by making appropriate modifications to the dairy cow FEM. The newly developed beef cow FEM captures the expected impacts of climate conditions and farming practices (e.g., grazing versus feedlots) on ammonia emissions.

Future Activities:

Work over the next year will focus on completing the farm model, the national inventory for beef cows, replicating this methodology for animal types other than cattle, and evaluating the FEMs against NAEMS data (completing Tasks 1-3 of the original proposal). Work in the final year will focus on inventory evaluation and understanding implications for PM_2.5 (Tasks 4 and 5 of the original proposal).

Journal Articles:

No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 3 publications for this project

Supplemental Keywords:

acid deposition, particulate matter, ecosystem, agriculture

Progress and Final Reports:

Original Abstract

The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.