FasMeF

Farm-scale Methane Fluxes

Context

The release of the IPCC’s Fourth Climate Assessment Report has once more drawn the public attention to the important role that agriculture plays in the global greenhouse gas budgets, namely in the case of CH₄ and N₂O. In Switzerland, 80.5% of all national CH4 emissions stem from the agricultural sector (year 2007 values). These numbers so far lack direct experimental validation in the field. The project will thus aim at validating CH₄ emissions at the farm scale as a first step towards a validation at the national scale.

Also the Swiss television SF1 was interested in our project investigating the regional methane budget. See the short external page video of the Einstein show (in Swiss German) broadcasted in September 2011, starring Jacqueline Stieger and external page Dennis Imer.

Objectives

Thus, we aim to quantify CH₄ emissions at the farm scale (0.5–5 km²) of the ETH Research Station Chamau and relate this to estimates reported in the Swiss National Inventory Report under the Kyoto Protocol.