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 David Rowlings
Faculty of Science, Quaternary Earth and Water Systems
Thesis Title: Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions from subtropical agricultural landscapes.
Current Thesis Abstract: Increases in the concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) in the atmosphere due to human activities have long been linked to climate change. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture contribute a major portion of Australia’s total GHG budget. This is expected to increase with changing land management over the next fifty years. For these reasons full greenhouse accounting to comprehensively assess the impact of land management strategies has continued to gain momentum in recent years, aimed at developing mitigation strategies to reduce GHG emissions.
Little comprehensive data exists for the processes related to GHG emissions from soils, the majority of work being associated with temperate climates or in laboratory conditions. Limited data is available pertaining to emissions from tropical land management systems.
Field experiments have been set up using intensive gas sampling methods with modern automatic GHG monitoring equipment together with extensive sampling using more traditional methods (chamber method) to give reliable estimates of gas fluxes. This data will be combined with in-depth soil analysis and laboratory experiments, to determine the key driving processes controlling GHG emissions from subtropical soils. This data will then be combined with soil process and GIS models to give a reliable estimate of GHG emissions from sub-tropical land use systems in SE Queensland.
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