Beef cattle methane emissions measured with tracer-ratio and inverse dispersion modelling techniques
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Trevor Coates; Julian Hill; Deli Chen; Nigel W. Tomkins; David G. Mayer; Roger Hegarty; Mei Bai; Frances Phillips; Thomas K. Flesch; J I Velazco
- Source
- Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, Vol 14, Pp 3469-3479 (2021)
- Subject
- Methane emissions
Atmospheric Science
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
TA715-787
0402 animal and dairy science
Analytical chemistry
Inverse
Environmental engineering
04 agricultural and veterinary sciences
Nitrous oxide
Beef cattle
Atmospheric dispersion modeling
TA170-171
040201 dairy & animal science
01 natural sciences
Methane
chemistry.chemical_compound
TheoryofComputation_MATHEMATICALLOGICANDFORMALLANGUAGES
chemistry
Earthwork. Foundations
TRACER
Greenhouse gas
Environmental science
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 1867-8548
1867-1381
The development and validation of management practices to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from livestock require accurate emission measurements. This study assessed the accuracy of a practical inverse dispersion modelling (IDM) technique to quantify methane (CH4) emitted from a small cattle herd (16 animals) confined to a 63 m × 60 m experimental pen. The IDM technique calculates emissions from the increase in the CH4 concentration measured downwind of the animals. The measurements were conducted for 7 d. Two types of open-path (OP) gas sensors were used to measure concentration in the IDM calculation: a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (IDM-FTIR) or a CH4 laser (IDM-Laser). The actual cattle emission rate was measured with a tracer-ratio technique using nitrous oxide (N2O) as the tracer gas. We found very good agreement between the two IDM emission estimates (308.1 ± 2.1 – mean ± SE – and 304.4 ± 8.0 g CH4 head−1 d−1 for the IDM-FTIR and IDM-Laser respectively) and the tracer-ratio measurements (301.9 ± 1.5 g CH4 head−1 d−1). This study suggests that a practical IDM measurement approach can provide an accurate method of estimating cattle emissions.