Environmental Smart Agriculture

More than one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from agriculture, forestry, and land-use change. How to reduce agricultural emissions through improved farming practices while meeting an increasing demand for food is arguably one of the most important challenge for humanity in the coming century. Our research investigates the relationships between food production, fertilizer use and climate change. It particularly focusses on the effects of land use and farming on the exchange of GHGs between soils, plants and the atmosphere. The aim is to develop strategies for producing larger volumes of food at a lower environmental cost. We use state of the art analytical techniques combined with modelling approaches to:

• assess the effect of agricultural management on soil borne GHG emissions, soil carbon levels and environmental harmful losses of reactive nitrogen
• identify region-specific climate-smart field management solutions for profitable and environmentally sustainable food and fiber production.
• compile global inventories of GHG emissions from fertilised croplands and predict feedbacks of global change.