Agricultural systems

Agricultural systems are a major emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) that will likely continue into the future as the global population and associated food demand continue to rise. While there is potential to reduce GHG emissions with policy and management decisions and societal choices toward diets with lower carbon footprints, regional inventories of agricultural GHG emissions are needed to monitor and assess the outcomes of GHG mitigation programs. Bottom-up methods are typically used to compile regional GHG emission inventories from one of the following approaches: (a) empirical analyses of experimental data, (b) process-based modeling approaches, or (c) measurement-based approaches relying on monitoring networks. Several options are available for improving regional GHG inventories in the near future including (a) advancing data collection on agricultural statistics including management practices, (b) application of higher tier methods where there are adequate data for process-based models or measurement-based methods, (c) developing and expanding monitoring networks that can inform the methods, and (d) incorporation of top-down methodologies into the inventory framework.