Supervisor
Dr Adam Pellegrini
Brief summary
One third of anthropogenic emissions arise from the food system, representing a potential lever to reduce emissions. Furthermore, changes in management can lead to sequestration of carbon, contributing another pathway to slow climate change. This project leverages work my group has done on assessing natural climate solutions in livestock and cropping systems to better understand the implications of changing management for systems-wide emission reductions. Specifically, the student will use models of greenhouse gas emissions on farms to scale-up estimates of how management changes impact emissions. This will involve analyses of product life cycles, models simulating emissions from livestock, and machine learning methods to map mitigation potential. Examples of tasks include (i) using trade datasets and land use models to assess the potential emissions arising from land use change, (ii) conducting meta-analyses to fill in the gaps on life cycles, (iii) analysing remote sensing data on agricultural productivity to constrain models.
Project Summary
One third of anthropogenic emissions arise from the food system, representing a potential lever to reduce emissions. Furthermore, changes in management can lead to sequestration of carbon, contributing another pathway to slow climate change. This project leverages work my group has done on assessing natural climate solutions in livestock and cropping systems to better understand the implications of changing management for systems-wide emission reductions. Specifically, the student will use models of greenhouse gas emissions on farms to scale-up estimates of how management changes impact emissions. This involves coding in IPCC Tier 2 models to estimate greenhouse gas emissions on farms combined with process-based models of soil organic carbon changes. By combining these estimates with life cycles (emissions arising from all the aspects of production such as machinery, fuel, fertilizer, seeds, etc.) we will gain better insight into the net-greenhouse gas balance following a transition to regenerative practices.
What will the successful applicant do?
Specifically, the student will use models of greenhouse gas emissions on farms to scale-up estimates of how management changes impact emissions. This will involve analyses of product life cycles, models simulating emissions from livestock, and machine learning methods to map mitigation potential. Examples of tasks include (i) using trade datasets and land use models to assess the potential emissions arising from land use change, (ii) conducting meta-analyses to fill in the gaps on life cycles, (iii) analysing remote sensing data on agricultural productivity to constrain models.
References
Hong, Chaopeng, et al. "Global and regional drivers of land-use emissions in 1961–2017." Nature 589.7843 (2021): 554-561.
Poore, Joseph, and Thomas Nemecek. "Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers." Science 360.6392 (2018): 987-992.