The Continental-Scale Greenhouse Gas Balance of Europe

About this book

This book assesses the current greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring capabilities of Europe, identifies and quantifies the uncertainties involved, and outlines the direction to a continental scale GHG monitoring network. The chapters provide a synthesis, based on current research results, of the European greenhouse gases budget, including both human-induced and biospheric sources and sinks. The authors also make recommendations for a multi-disciplinary integration in order to provide the scientific foundation for a full carbon, and possibly full greenhouse, accounting system by 2010. Through the CarboEurope project, Europe is taking the lead in much of this research, and it will be of interest to other areas of the world as well.

The book uniquely addresses both the methodology of carbon cycle science and the science itself. Rather than being a straight methods book, it is a synthesis of carbon cycle science. The methods included are valuable, but are used to contribute to an understanding of biospheric regulation, providing the first comprehensive coverage of a full GHG accounting and monitoring system.

Contents

Introduction: CarboEurope GHG and goals of the book.- Methods and requirements for a global carbon data assimilation schemes.- Optimizing the observation network.- Improving model parameters from sparse observations.- Effective sampling of soil carbon at European scale.- Effective sampling of ecosystem fluxes: a bottom up perspective.- Full GHG accounting of grasslands.- Observation of CH4 emissions from wetlands.- State of the art carbon inventories and ways to use them for carbon cycle research.- Lateral C-fluxes.- Top down constraints from atmospheric observations and models on the European carbon balance.- Variability and mean CH4 fluxes.- Quantifying fossil fuel emissions.- Inventories of fossil fuel emissions and downscaling to higher temporal and spatial scales.- Riverine transport of carbon and nitrogen.- Use of Satellite information to determine GHG fluxes.- Issues in establishing GHG concentration monitoring networks.- Designing a observation strategy for N2O.- Synthesis: where do we stand with the current observation strategy and where do we go?

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