Annual greenhouse gas emissions from sheepfolds and cattle sheds
2022
Chen, Haiqing | Li, Shuangwei | Zheng, Xunhua | Liu, Chunyan | Kuzyakov, Yakov
Livestock sheds are local and regional hotspots of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, but only very few studies analyse the intensities of GHG emissions from this source. The objective of this study was to quantify annual CH₄, CO₂ and N₂O emissions from inside and outside of sheepfolds and summer cattle sheds in a typical agro‐pastoral ecotone using static chamber technique. Both sheepfolds and cattle shed functioned as huge net sources of CH₄ and N₂O at annual scale. Animal presence increased CH₄, CO₂ and N₂O effluxes for up to 1100 times compared to the animal sheds without animals. N₂O emissions boosted for 160%–280% during and after rainfall and spring‐thaw events. The CH₄ and CO₂ fluxes increased exponentially with faeces temperature for the outside sheepfold and summer cattle shed. The annual GHG emissions from both sheepfolds and summer cattle shed were 56 t CO₂ equivalents ha⁻¹, of which N₂O contributed to 94%. Sheepfold dominated the total GHG emissions from animal sheds and accounted for 83% of the annual GHG flux. Annual emission on a per animal basis was 15, 0.2 and 28 kg CO₂ eq year⁻¹ sheep⁻¹ and 26, 10 and 140 kg CO₂ eq year⁻¹ cattle⁻¹ for N₂O, CH₄ and CO₂, respectively. The annual N₂O emissions from animal sheds were 70–250 times larger than nearby grassland soils, which were also net sink for atmospheric CH₄. Concluding, animal sheds are very intensive local hotspots of GHG emissions, which should be considered at the local and regional scales.
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