Carbon Footprint of Mediterranean Pasture-Based Native Beef: Effects of Agronomic Practices and Pasture Management under Different Climate Change Scenarios

Abstract

A better understanding of soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics is needed when assessing the carbon footprint (CFP) of livestock products and the effectiveness of possible agriculture mitigation strategies. This study aimed (i) to perform a cradle-to-gate CFP of pasture-based beef cattle in a Mediterranean agropastoral system (ii) and to assess the effects on the CFP of alternative tillage, fertilizing, and grazing practices under current (NCC) and future climate change (CC) scenarios. Minimum (Mt) and no-tillage (Nt) practices were compared to current tillage (Ct); a 50% increase (Hf) and decrease (Lf) in fertilization was evaluated against the current (Cf) rate; and rotational grazing (Rg) was evaluated versus the current continuous grazing (Cg) system. The denitrification–decomposition (DNDC) model was run using NCC as well as representative concentration pathways to investigate the effects of farm management practices coupled with future CC scenarios on SOC dynamics, N2O fluxes, and crop yield. Within NCC and CtCf, an emission intensity of 26.9 ± 0.7 kg CO2eq per kg live body weight was estimated. Compared to Ct, the adoption of Mt and Nt reduced the CFP by 20% and 35%, respectively, while NtHf reduced it by 40%. Conservation tillage practices were thus shown to be effective in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

The Tapio Decoupling Principle and Key Strategies for Changing Factors of Chinese Urban Carbon Footprint Based on Cloud Computing

“…Cities are the areas where human activities have the greatest impact on the surface. Accelerated urbanization and urban expansion have had a profound impact on the global carbon cycle and climate change [ 7 ].…”

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Carbon Sinks of an Italian Natural Park

“…An open-source tool 2 developed by the WRI has been used for the quantitative uncertainty assessment of the annual GHG emission arising from the Reserve. Differently, the uncertainty range provided for the annual C-sinks rates coming from the agricultural soil (Grossi et al, 2020) and the aboveground forest growth (Scrinzi et al, 2019) were those reported by the authors of the estimations.…”

“…A Tier 3 approach involving the use of a process-based model named the Denitrification-Decomposition (DNDC) model (Li et al, 2000) was used for the assessment of GHG emissions (i.e., CH 4 , direct and indirect N 2 O) coming from the manure deposited on pasture by cattle (Grossi et al, 2020). A Tier 1 (Velthof, 2014;IPCC, 2019) approach was used for the estimations of the GHG from both horses and wild fauna' manure (Supplementary Table S10 [3-4]).…”

“…The annual GHG removals attributable to the agricultural soil C-sinks were quantified by using the DNDC model (Grossi et al, 2020). Differently, by assuming an equilibrium state (Demertzi et al, 2016;Peñaloza et al, 2019), the forest soil C-dynamics were not included in the CF.…”

“…Specifically, the annual C-sinks were converted in CO 2e considering the atomic weight of C and the molecular weight of CO 2 , therefore multiplying the amount of C by 3.67. The use of a DNDC model allowed us to account for soil GHG emissions and annual SOC dynamics (Grossi et al, 2020). Due to lack of data, the forest soil C stock changes were not accounted for and were assumed, according to the Tier 1 IPCC (2019) approach, to currently be in equilibrium (Demertzi et al, 2016;Peñaloza et al, 2019).…”