The Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) notice of funding.
This opportunity from USDA requires a US scientist to partner with a foreign counterpart. APN member country scientists with US collaborators can jointly plan and prepare a proposal to be submitted by the US scientist to the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service.
All applications must reflect an ongoing relationship between mentors and fellows from the Borlaug International Agricultural Technology Fellowship Program; please contact the program manager regarding this requirement.
Deadline is March 1, 2021, 11:59 PM US Eastern time. Funding limit is $50,000 per award for up to two years duration. Includes applied research, extension, and education projects.
The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) eighth annual workshop videos are now live.
The AgMIP8 Virtual Webshop took place from October 12 – 16th and showcased three themes central to AgMIP’s research and development – food systems, shocks, and actions. Additional interdisciplinary topics included health and nutrition, modeling, environmental stresses, and resilience.
On Monday, 7 December at 14:00 CET, FAO and UNEP will be hosting the webinar Nitrogen Challenges in Agri-food systems: Halve Nitrogen Waste by 2030.
This virtual event will focus on the nitrogen challenges and potential technical solutions and policies in agri-food systems and highlight the ongoing efforts to better manage nitrogen. It will provide an opportunity to learn about the multiple roles of nitrogen in agri-food systems and how different stakeholders can help to achieve sustainable nitrogen management.
Wageningen University & Research (WUR) is recruiting a full professor to lead the Chair group of Cell Biology and Immunology (CBI).
As head of the CBI group, you will lead a vibrant team of researchers and lecturers. You will support the group’s research ambitions by further strengthening its position in national and international networks, by consolidating established research lines as well as developing new lines of research. You will actively contribute to the excellent reputation and position of WUR in higher education through your active role in their current education programme and in the ongoing development of courses at BSc, MSc and PhD level.
The position will be based in Wageningen
For more information, including how to apply please click here
Indirect nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from ammonia volatilization, nitrate leaching and run-off were first included in the Australian National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (NGGI) methodology in 2005.
The first implementation assumed that the fraction of synthetic fertiliser N volatilised as ammonia (NH3-N) and nitrogen oxide (NOx-N) (FracGASF) was based on the IPCC default emission factor (EF) of 0.1 Gg N/Gg applied i.e. 10% of all N fertiliser applied was deemed to be lost as ammonia.
This default method also assumed that 100% of this ammonia was then deposited on agricultural land, using the IPCC default emission factor for N2O from N fertiliser of 0.01 (Gg N2O-N/Gg N) i.e. assuming that 1% of this deposited nitrogen was then lost as N2O.
Following two successive national N2O research programs in Australia, where emissions of nitrous oxide from varying soils, climates, agricultural systems and nitrogen inputs were quantified, a series of industry-specific Tier 2 emission factors were published and adopted into the NGGI.
The Australian Agriculture Inventory Expert Advisory Panel then discussed the logic of assuming that ammonia emitted and then re-deposited into these systems would have an EF of 0.01, while fertiliser N entering the same soil as ammonia would have the industry-specific EF as listed above.
As the highest ammonia deposition rates are found within a few hundred meters of the emission source, the EFs applied for ammonia deposition were therefore considered to be related to the source of the N.
The NGGI was therefore updated so that the EFs applied for atmospheric deposition are the same as those applied for direct N2O emissions from N fertiliser applied to that system, as listed above.
The agricultural sector and land use of agricultural soils in the LULUCF sector are responsible for 11 % of total German greenhouse gas emissions. Drained peatlands are a major source of CO2, which accounts for approximately one third of these emissions, from only 6 % of the agricultural land area. However, CO2 emissions from mineral soils currently have high uncertainty in the German LULUCF inventory and the impact of measures aiming at carbon sequestration by improved agricultural management practices cannot currently be reported.
The Thünen Institute[1] uses a Tier-2 approach to estimate annual SOC stock changes in mineral soils for the German LULUCF inventory. In order to better represent mitigation and carbon sequestration efforts, the long-term roadmap aims to switch to a Tier-3 modelling approach. A representative SOC stock baseline is necessary as a first step and therefore, after completion of the second German forest soil inventory[2], the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture tasked the Thünen Institute to conduct the first comprehensive inventory of agricultural soils[3]. From 2009 to 2018, cropland and grassland soils at more than 3000 representative locations (8×8 km grid) were sampled to a depth of 100 cm. A unique feature of the German agricultural Soil Inventory is that the preceding ten years of management data were surveyed and evaluated for all sampling sites. This includes information on crop rotations, fertilizer inputs, yields and tillage for croplands as well as stocking density, fertilization and cutting frequency for grasslands.
On mineral soils, croplands (n=2204) had an average SOC stock of 61±25 (0-30 cm) and 96±48 Mg C ha-1 (0-100 cm), while grasslands (n=704) stored on average 88±32 (0 – 30 cm) and 135±70 (0-100 cm) Mg C ha-1. The 146 sampled organic soil profiles had an average SOC stock of 528±201 Mg C ha-1 (0-100 cm). A machine learning approach was used to predict the most important drivers of SOC stock on the national scale. Neither climate nor management variables are among the most important predictors, which does however not imply that management is irrelevant for SOC dynamics – the opposite is the case. However, on a national scale it is mainly soil properties that explain the variability in SOC stocks. The most important soil properties are C:N ratio, clay content and groundwater level; topsoil SOC stocks are also driven by land use (cropland vs. grassland). The reason for the high importance of soil C:N ratio is the abundance of so called “black sands” in the North West of Germany, which are mainly podzols with a peat or heathland history, low pH values and a large proportion of undecomposed, recalcitrant plant material.
Results of soil analyses and profile descriptions are made available on an open data repository[4]. The agricultural soil inventory will be repeated in 2023-2028 at the same representative locations to enable assessing the temporal developments of SOC stocks. Average baseline SOC stocks are already integrated into LULUCF reporting. As a next step, it is planned to use stratified SOC stocks for more reliable estimates of land use change effects. This follows the logic that the average SOC stock difference between croplands and grasslands cannot be fully ascribed to land use, but is also driven by soil properties. Finally, machine learning is currently also applied for SOC stock regionalization to derive a reliable, high resolution SOC map of Germany that is needed for higher Tier approaches.
Figure 1: Soil sampling with interested audience.
Figure 2: Spatial distribution of topsoil (0-30 cm) organic carbon stocks (adapted from Poeplau et al. 20205).
[5] Poeplau, C., Jacobs, A., Don, A., Vos, C., Schneider, F., Wittnebel, M., Tiemeyer, B., Heidkamp, A., Prietz, R., Flessa, H., 2021. Stocks of organic carbon in German agricultural soils—Key results of the first comprehensive inventory. Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish