Measuring and Managing Methane Emissions from Livestock

Efforts to reduce livestock methane emissions in Australia received a major boost with the launch of a new research cluster led by the University of Melbourne and drawing on expertise from five other Australian universities, researchers in Canada and the CSIRO's Sustainable Agriculture Flagship. The collaboration, called the 'Livestock Methane Research Cluster' aims to improve measurement and management of methane emissions from cattle, which they burp into the atmosphere. Agriculture directly accounts for 16 per cent of Australia's overall greenhouse gas emissions and the grazing lands of northern Australia are thought to be responsible for about one-third of these total emissions. Professor Deli Chen from the University of Melbourne's School of Land and Environment said the new Cluster will draw on the skills of world-leading research institutes to accurately measure methane emissions from livestock under real grazing conditions. "This is a critical step if we are to help agriculture reduce its emissions because if you can't measure, you can't mitigate," Professor Chen said. "Our research may also help boost the productivity of the cattle industry in a more sustainable way because an estimated 2-12 per cent of the energy ingested by cattle is lost as methane waste, reducing beef production and costing graziers money." The team will use a range of sophisticated instruments including open path lasers and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) as well as aircraft mounted cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) based detectors to measure methane in the atmosphere.