GREETINGS FROM SRI LANKA ! Emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) from aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem
GREETINGS FROM SRI LANKA ! Emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) from aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems inevitably has a major impact on global climate. Major efforts on monitoring and quantifying GHG fluxes are based on the measurements with eddy covariance and closed chamber techniques. The measured data are then used to calibrate the models that estimate global GHG budgets. However, the measurements of GHG emissions are largely concentrated only in one part of the world, mostly in North America and Europe, whilst the low and middle-income countries in the Global South, including South-East Asia, remain largely underrepresented. Unfortunately, these countries have emerging environmental problems with increasing population and rapid changes in land-use patterns. Lack of funding for research, technical and technological incompetency, and political uncertainties are among the major factors leading to very limited measurements in these underrepresented countries. Consequently, the specific role of GHG emissions from these regions has been considerably downplayed in the global GHG budget. Funded by the Asia-Pacific Network (APN) for Global Change Research, this study takes a regional initiative to measure GHG emissions from paddy ecosystems which constitute a major source of methane, a high potent greenhouse gas, in south Asian agroecosystems. Measurement campaigns have been undertaken in selected paddy sites in Sri Lanka and India to estimate methane emissions in two paddy cycles throughout the year. The photo shows the static closed-chamber measurements at an experimental paddy site belonging to the Bathalegoda Rice Research Institute in Sri Lanka. Tharindi Lakshani, a postgraduate student at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka is sampling gases from the paddy site for measurement of methane concentrations. The study envisages to contribute to the local and regional database on paddy emissions and thereby help closing the critical gaps made by lack of dependable data from underrepresented regions. Photo courtesy: Dr. Chamindu DTKK, Funding: Asia-Pacific Network (CRRP2020-07MY-Deepagoda) -- source link
Tumblr Blog : americangeophysicalunion.tumblr.com