A meta-analysis of environmental factor effects on ammonia emissions from dairy cattle houses

Sanchís, Emilio; Calvet, S.; Prado, Agustín del; Estellés, F.

doi:10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2018.11.017

Cited by 49 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(21 reference statements)

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“…Lower productivity per cow, as expected under heat stress (see Sect. 3.4.1), has been linked with increased ammonia emission intensity in the literature (Groenestein et al, 2019;Sajeev et al, 2018;Sanchis et al, 2019). The ammonia release from manure increases with temperature by approximately 1.5 g. Hence, the increase in heat stress events can be translated into the number of hours with at least 4.5 g per cow and per day higher ammonia emissions.…”

Section: Environmental Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heat stress risk in European dairy cattle husbandry under different climate change scenarios – uncertainties and potential impacts

et al. 2019

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Abstract. In the last decades, a global warming trend was observed. Along with the temperature increase, modifications in the humidity and wind regime amplify the regional and local impacts on livestock husbandry. Direct impacts include the occurrence of climatic stress conditions. In Europe, cows are economically highly relevant and are mainly kept in naturally ventilated buildings that are most susceptible to climate change. The high-yielding cows are particularly vulnerable to heat stress. Modifications in housing management are the main measures taken to improve the ability of livestock to cope with these conditions. Measures are typically taken in direct reaction to uncomfortable conditions instead of in anticipation of a long-term risk for climatic stress. Measures that balance welfare, environmental and economic issues are barely investigated in the context of climate change and are thus almost not available for commercial farms. Quantitative analysis of the climate change impacts on animal welfare and linked economic and environmental factors is rare. Therefore, we used a numerical modeling approach to estimate the future heat stress risk in such dairy cattle husbandry systems. The indoor climate was monitored inside three reference barns in central Europe and the Mediterranean regions. An artificial neuronal network (ANN) was trained to relate the outdoor weather conditions provided by official meteorological weather stations to the measured indoor microclimate. Subsequently, this ANN model was driven by an ensemble of regional climate model projections with three different greenhouse gas concentration scenarios. For the evaluation of the heat stress risk, we considered the number and duration of heat stress events. Based on the changes in the heat stress events, various economic and environmental impacts were estimated. The impacts of the projected increase in heat stress risk varied among the barns due to different locations and designs as well as the anticipated climate change (considering different climate models and future greenhouse gas concentrations). There was an overall increasing trend in number and duration of heat stress events. At the end of the century, the number of annual stress events can be expected to increase by up to 2000, while the average duration of the events increases by up to 22 h compared to the end of the last century. This implies strong impacts on economics, environment and animal welfare and an urgent need for mid-term adaptation strategies. We anticipated that up to one-tenth of all hours of a year, correspondingly one-third of all days, will be classified as critical heat stress conditions. Due to heat stress, milk yield may decrease by about 2.8 % relative to the present European milk yield, and farmers may expect financial losses in the summer season of about 5.4 % of their monthly income. In addition, an increasing demand for emission reduction measures must be expected, as an emission increase of about 16 Gg of ammonia and 0.1 Gg of methane per year can be expected under the anticipated heat stress conditions. The cattle respiration rate increases by up to 60 %, and the standing time may be prolonged by 1 h. This causes health issues and increases the probability of medical treatments. The various impacts imply feedback loops in the climate system which are presently underexplored. Hence, future in-depth studies on the different impacts and adaptation options at different stress levels are highly recommended.

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Section: Environmental Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heat stress risk in European dairy cattle husbandry under different climate change scenarios – uncertainties and potential impacts

et al. 2019

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“…Agriculture contributes around 92% to the European ammonia emissions [6]. Livestock housing, particularly the management of slurry and manure, is the main source of ammonia emissions from agriculture [7]. The evaluation of housing systems' emissions is, however, challenging and involves large uncertainties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How the Selection of Training Data and Modeling Approach Affects the Estimation of Ammonia Emissions from a Naturally Ventilated Dairy Barn—Classical Statistics versus Machine Learning

et al. 2020

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Environmental protection efforts can only be effective in the long term with a reliable quantification of pollutant gas emissions as a first step to mitigation. Measurement and analysis strategies must permit the accurate extrapolation of emission values. We systematically analyzed the added value of applying modern machine learning methods in the process of monitoring emissions from naturally ventilated livestock buildings to the atmosphere. We considered almost 40 weeks of hourly emission values from a naturally ventilated dairy cattle barn in Northern Germany. We compared model predictions using 27 different scenarios of temporal sampling, multiple measures of model accuracy, and eight different regression approaches. The error of the predicted emission values with the tested measurement protocols was, on average, well below 20%. The sensitivity of the prediction to the selected training dataset was worse for the ordinary multilinear regression. Gradient boosting and random forests provided the most accurate and robust emission value predictions, accompanied by the second-smallest model errors. Most of the highly ranked scenarios involved six measurement periods, while the scenario with the best overall performance was: One measurement period in summer and three in the transition periods, each lasting for 14 days.

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“…Sect. 3.4.1), has been linked with increased ammonia emission intensity in the literature (Groenestein et al, 2019;Sajeev et al, 2018;Sanchis et al, 2019). The ammonia release from manure increases with temperature by approximately 1.5 g Hence, the increase in heat stress events can be translated into the number of hours with at least 4.5 g per cow and day higher ammonia emissions.…”

Section: Environmental Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heat stress risk in European dairy cattle husbandry under different climate change scenarios – uncertainties and potential impacts

Hempel¹,

Menz²,

Pinto³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. In the last decades, an exceptional global warming trend was observed. Along with the temperature increase, modifications in the humidity and wind regime amplify the regional and local impacts on livestock husbandry. Direct impacts include the occurrence of climatic stress conditions. In Europe, cows are economically highly relevant and are mainly kept in naturally ventilated buildings that are most susceptible to climate change. The high-yielding cows are particularly vulnerable to heat stress. Modifications in housing management are the main measures taken to improve the ability of livestock to cope with these conditions. Measures are, however, typically taken in direct reaction to uncomfortable conditions instead of in anticipation of a long term risk for climatic stress. Moreover, measures that balance welfare, environmental and economic issues are barely investigated in the context of climate change and are thus almost not available for commercial farms. Quantitative analysis of the climate change impacts on the animal welfare and linked economic and environmental factors are rare. Therefore, we used a numerical modeling approach to estimate the future heat stress risk in such dairy cattle husbandry systems. The indoor climate was monitored inside three reference barns in Central Europe and in the Mediterranean region. An artificial neuronal network (ANN) was trained to relate the outdoor weather conditions provided by official meteorological weather stations to the measured indoor microclimate. Subsequently, this ANN model was driven by an ensemble of regional climate model projections with three different greenhouse gas concentration scenarios. For the evaluation of the heat stress risk, we considered the amount and duration of heat stress events. Based on the changes of the heat stress events various economic and environmental impacts were estimated. We found that the impacts of the projected increase of heat stress risk vary dependent on the region respectively the barn, the climate model and the assumed greenhouse gas concentration. There was an overall increasing trend in number and duration of heat stress events. At the end of the century, the number of annual stress events can be expected to increase by up to 2000 hours while the average duration of the events increases by up to 22 h compared to the end of the last century. This implies strong impacts on economics, environment and animal welfare and an urgent need for mid-term adaptation strategies. We anticipated that up to one tenth of all hours of a year respectively one third of all days will be classified as critical heat stress conditions. Due to heat stress, milk yield may decrease by about 3.5 % relative to the present European milk yield and farmers may expect financial losses in the summer season of about 6.6 % of their monthly income. In addition, an increasing demand for emission reduction measures must be expected, as an emission increase of about 16 Gg ammonia and 0.1 Gg methane per year can be expected under the anticipated heat stress conditions. The cattle respiration rate increases by up to 60 % and the standing time may be prolonged by 1 h. This promotes health issues and increases the probability of medical treatments. The various impacts imply feedback loops in the climate system which are presently underexplored. Hence, future in-depth studies on the different impacts and adaptation options at different stress levels are highly recommended.

show abstract

A meta-analysis of environmental factor effects on ammonia emissions from dairy cattle houses

Cited by 49 publications

References 42 publications

Heat stress risk in European dairy cattle husbandry under different climate change scenarios – uncertainties and potential impacts

Heat stress risk in European dairy cattle husbandry under different climate change scenarios – uncertainties and potential impacts

How the Selection of Training Data and Modeling Approach Affects the Estimation of Ammonia Emissions from a Naturally Ventilated Dairy Barn—Classical Statistics versus Machine Learning

Heat stress risk in European dairy cattle husbandry under different climate change scenarios – uncertainties and potential impacts

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