Artificial Intelligence Approach for Estimating Dairy Methane Emissions

Abstract

California’s dairy sector accounts for ∼50% of anthropogenic CH4 emissions in the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventory. Although California dairy facilities’ location and herd size vary over time, atmospheric inverse modeling studies rely on decade-old facility-scale geospatial information. For the first time, we apply artificial intelligence (AI) to aerial imagery to estimate dairy CH4 emissions from California’s San Joaquin Valley (SJV), a region with ∼90% of the state’s dairy population. Using an AI method, we process 316,882 images to estimate the facility-scale herd size across the SJV. The AI approach predicts herd size that strongly (>95%) correlates with that made by human visual inspection, providing a low-cost alternative to the labor-intensive inventory development process. We estimate SJV’s dairy enteric and manure CH4 emissions for 2018 to be 496–763 Gg/yr (mean = 624; 95% confidence) using the predicted herd size. We also apply our AI approach to estimate CH4 emission reduction from anaerobic digester deployment. We identify 162 large (90th percentile) farms and estimate a CH4 reduction potential of 83 Gg CH4/yr for these large facilities from anaerobic digester adoption. The results indicate that our AI approach can be applied to characterize the manure system (e.g., use of an anaerobic lagoon) and estimate GHG emissions for other sectors.

Birth of dairy 4.0: Opportunities and challenges in adoption of fourth industrial revolution technologies in the production of milk and its derivatives

“…AI can be used to predict milk production and quality based on computer vision methods that estimate the heart rate and respiration rate of cows ( Fuentes et al, 2021 ). AI has also been applied to aerial imagery to estimate dairy methane emissions and herd size ( Jeong et al, 2022 ).…”

Advances in Methane Emission Estimation in Livestock: A Review of Data Collection Methods, Model Development and the Role of AI Technologies

“…Microorganisms in these animals' rumens break down complex carbohydrates by anaerobic digestion, producing methane as a byproduct [8]. Furthermore, livestock manure management, including storage, processing, and disposal, can result in considerable methane emissions [1,19].…”

“…Methane emissions are a significant contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and play an important role in climate change mitigation efforts. Methane, as one of the primary GHGs, is a short-lived GHG that has a much higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide over a shorter time-period [1]. Methane is responsible for around 14-16% of total global GHG emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [2,3].…”

Methane emissions decline from reduced oil, natural gas, and refinery production during COVID-19

“…These instruments have been used in a number of previous CH 4 studies spanning different emission sectors and locations. In the United States, studies have surveyed the oil and gas sector for the Four Corners Region [19] and the Permian Basin [20], additional basins including the Uintah, Denver-Julesberg, and Marcellus [21], manure management and waste management sectors in California [10,22], and CH 4 hotspots associated with thermokarst lakes in Alaska [23,24]. Additional international flight campaigns have characterized CH 4 emissions from the oil and gas sectors in Canada [25] and the oil, gas, and waste management sectors in India [17].…”