Exploring the mitigation potential role of legumes in European agriculture – a modelling approach
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Date
30/06/2015Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
31/12/2100Author
Angelopoulos, Nikolaos G.
Metadata
Abstract
The increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG)
has direct consequences on humans and threatens the sustainability of
natural and managed ecosystems. The European Union has set high targets
for reducing their emissions by 80‐95% of the 1990 levels by 2050 and is
working progressively to achieve these reductions. Legumes are an
important group of crop species as they have the potential to reduce N2O
emissions. Biogeochemical modelling can provide a valuable tool to explore
options for mitigating GHG emissions and especially N2O from European
agriculture by simulating novel legume based rotations. UK‐DNDC is a
process based, biogeochemical model that can be used towards that goal.
The model was tested for various regions in Europe and showed that it can simulate the N dynamics within crop rotations across a range of pedoclimatic
zones. It is a useful tool in 1) identifying where and when high
emissions occur, 2) highlighting the effects of the management practices on
emissions and 3) exploring the impact of alternative managements on
emissions. New rotations, which include legumes, have been proposed in
order to assess the sustainability of the legumes in European agriculture and
the effect that they will have on N2O production. Five regions in Europe,
namely Sweden, Germany, Italy, Scotland and Romania, were selected in
order to test the differences between legume based rotations and non‐legume
based. These regions represent a wide range of pedo‐climatic zones in
Europe. In most case studies, legumes showed that they can make an
important contribution to mitigating N2O emissions. However, there were
cases in which legumes enhanced the production of N2O. Modelling can
help to understand system dynamics and it can also help to explore
mitigation options for European agriculture in terms of N2O production. An
important element of environmental modelling is to understand the
uncertainty and sensitivity of model parameters in relation to the model
outputs. The sensitivity testing of the model showed that clay content, initial
soil organic carbon content and atmospheric background CO2 concentration
are three key input parameters Nitrous oxide emissions were one of the
results that showed great uncertainty in all the analyses. That highlights the
challenges of the modelling activity for accurate N2O simulations in a
dynamic ecosystem.