Emission Data Collation
MELS will collate CH4, N2O and NH3 emissions
MELS will collate CH4, N2O and NH3 emissions datasets associated with manure management in livestock production from international project participants along with ancillary data. MELS builds on the Global Research Alliance (GRA) DATAMAN project, which incorporates existing databases (e.g. ALFAM2, AEDA, ELFE) and datasets from developed and developing countries.
Analysis of the resulting data will allow the project team to generate empirical and/or process-oriented relationships between GHG emissions and manure composition, management, climate and abiotic data.
This will allow the development of better GHG emission inventory methodologies for livestock systems, taking regional variations in GHG emissions and mitigation efficiencies into account, providing an improved basis for assessing and documenting mitigation options.
A whole system approach will be used, in which the mass flow of both C and N will be followed, allowing a quantification of the effect of applying a mitigation measure to one GHG source on other sources (knock-on effects).
Recommendations
MELS will recommend improvements to GHG emission inventories
At the national scale, these methodological developments will be used to recommend improvements to GHG emission inventories, especially with regard to documenting the effect of mitigation measures. Here, the value of the C and N flow approach allows trade-offs and synergies to be identified and consistency between reporting to different bodies (UNFCCC, UNECE) to be achieved.
The benefits of these improvements will be supported by developing methods to improve the quantity and quality of activity data available to support national inventories, maintain inventory transparency and assess the cost implications of mitigation measures for the industry and society.
Case Studies
Use of case studies for assessment of farm-scale GHG Decision Support Systems
MELS will use a range of case studies selected and designed using consultation with stakeholders to assess the functionality and usability of existing farm-scale GHG decision support systems (DSSs). For those countries not currently possessing a farm-scale DSS, MELS will provide a fully functional prototype that performs the core GHG emission and economic calculations.
Dissemination
MELS will be in close collaboration with important scientific, trans-national institutions
To ensure the widespread dissemination of project results, MELS will liaise with the Manure Management Network of the GRA, the UN Expert Panel for the Mitigation of Agricultural Nitrogen (EPMAN) and Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen (TFRN), the Task Force on Emissions, Inventories and Projections, particularly its Expert Panel on Agriculture and Nature and the IPCC, as representatives of all these organisations are involved in the MELS consortium.