Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2018
Abstract
Norway is strongly committed to the Paris Climate Agreement with an ambitious goal of 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emission by 2030. The land sector, including agriculture and forestry, must critically contribute to this national target. Beyond emission reduction, the land sector has the unique capacity to actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere through biological carbon storage in biomass and in soils. Soils are the largest reservoir of terrestrial carbon, and relatively small changes in soil carbon content can have an amplified mitigation effect on the Earth’s climate. Therefore, improved management of soils for carbon storage is receiving a lot of attention, for example through international political initiatives such as the “4-permill” initiative. However, in Norway, many mitigation measures targeting soil carbon might negatively impact food production and economic activity. For example, soil carbon storage can be increased by shifting from cereal crop production to grasslands, but Norway already has abundant grassland and a comparatively small area dedicated to cereals. Another such issue is cultivation on drained peatland, where food is produced at the expense of large losses of soil carbon as CO2 to the atmosphere. Therefore, there is a need to look for win-win solutions for soil carbon storage, which benefit both food production and climate mitigation. Large-scale conversion of agricultural and forest waste biomass to biochar is such an option, and is considered the activity with the largest potential for soil carbon sequestration in Norway. Biochar has been demonstrated to have a mean residence time exceeding 100 years in Norwegian field conditions (Rasse et al, 2017), and no negative effects on plant and soils has been observed. However, despite the convincing benefits of biochar as a climate mitigation solution, it has not yet advanced much beyond the research stage, notably because its effect on yield are too modest. Here, we will first present the comparative advantage of biochar technology as compared to traditional agronomy methods for large-scale C storage in Norwegian agricultural soils. We will further discuss the need for developing innovations in pyrolysis and nutrient-rich waste recycling leading to biochar-fertilizer products as win-win solution for carbon storage and food production.
Authors
Van Minh Dang Stephen Joseph Huu Tap Van Thi Lan Anh Mai Thi Minh Hoa Duong Simon Weldon Paul Munroe David Mitchell Sarasadat TaherymoosaviAbstract
Heavy metal contamination of crop lands surrounding mines in North Vietnam is a major environmental issue for both farmers and the population as a whole. Technology for the production of biochar at a village and household level has been successfully introduced into Vietnamese villages. This study was undertaken to determine if rice straw biochar produced in simple drum ovens could remediate contaminated land. Tests were also carried out to determine if biochar and apatite mixed together could be more effective than biochar alone. Incubation trials were carried out over 90 days in pots to determine the total changes in exchangeable Cd, Pb and Zn. Detailed tests were carried out to determine the mechanisms that bound the heavy metals to the biochar. It was found that biochar at 5% (BC5) and the mixture of biochar and apatite at 3% (BCA3) resulted in the greatest reduction of exchangeable forms of Cd, Pb and Zn. The increase in soil pH caused by adding biochar and apatite created more negative charge on the soil surface that promoted Pb, Zn and Cd adsorption. Heavy metals were mainly bound in the organic, Fe/Mn and carbonate fractions of the biochar and the mixture of biochar and apatite by either ion exchange, adsorption, dissolution/precipitation and through substitution of cations in large organic molecules.
Authors
Alice BudaiAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Daniel RasseAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Chunjing Qiu Dan Zhu Philippe Ciais Bertrand Guenet Gerhard Krinner Shushi Peng Mika Aurela Christian Bernhofer Christian Brümmer Syndonia Bret-Harte Housen Chu Jiquan Chen Ankur R. Desai Jiří Dušek Eugénie S. Euskirchen Krzysztof Fortuniak Lawrence B. Flanagan Thomas Friborg Mateusz Grygoruk Sébastien Gogo Thomas Grünwald Birger U. Hansen David Holl Elyn Humphreys Miriam Hurkuck Gerard Kiely Janina Klatt Lars Kutzbach Chloé Largeron Fatima Laggoun-Défarge Magnus Lund Peter M. Lafleur Xuefei Li Ivan Mammarella Lutz Merbold Mats B. Nilsson Janusz Olejnik Mikaell Ottosson-Löfvenius Walter C. Oechel Frans-Jan W. Parmentier Matthias Peichl Norbert Pirk Olli Peltola Włodzimierz Pawlak Daniel Rasse Janne Rinne Gaius R. Shaver Hans Peter Schmid Matteo Sottocornola Rainer Steinbrecher Torsten Sachs Marek Urbaniak Donatella Zona Klaudia ZiemblinskaAbstract
Peatlands store substantial amounts of carbon and are vulnerable to climate change. We present a modified version of the Organising Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic Ecosystems (ORCHIDEE) land surface model for simulating the hydrology, surface energy, and CO2 fluxes of peatlands on daily to annual timescales. The model includes a separate soil tile in each 0.5° grid cell, defined from a global peatland map and identified with peat-specific soil hydraulic properties. Runoff from non-peat vegetation within a grid cell containing a fraction of peat is routed to this peat soil tile, which maintains shallow water tables. The water table position separates oxic from anoxic decomposition. The model was evaluated against eddy-covariance (EC) observations from 30 northern peatland sites, with the maximum rate of carboxylation (Vcmax) being optimized at each site. Regarding short-term day-to-day variations, the model performance was good for gross primary production (GPP) (r2 = 0.76; Nash–Sutcliffe modeling efficiency, MEF = 0.76) and ecosystem respiration (ER, r2 = 0.78, MEF = 0.75), with lesser accuracy for latent heat fluxes (LE, r2 = 0.42, MEF = 0.14) and and net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE, r2 = 0.38, MEF = 0.26). Seasonal variations in GPP, ER, NEE, and energy fluxes on monthly scales showed moderate to high r2 values (0.57–0.86). For spatial across-site gradients of annual mean GPP, ER, NEE, and LE, r2 values of 0.93, 0.89, 0.27, and 0.71 were achieved, respectively. Water table (WT) variation was not well predicted (r2 < 0.1), likely due to the uncertain water input to the peat from surrounding areas. However, the poor performance of WT simulation did not greatly affect predictions of ER and NEE. We found a significant relationship between optimized Vcmax and latitude (temperature), which better reflects the spatial gradients of annual NEE than using an average Vcmax value.
Authors
Inge Stupak Tat Smith Nicholas Clarke Teodorita Al-Seadi Lina Beniušienė Niclas Scott Bentsen Quentin Cheung Virginia Dale Jinke van Dam Rocio Diaz-Chavez Uwe Fritsche Martyn Futter Jianbang Gan Kaija Hakala Thomas Horschig Martin Junginger Yoko Kitigawa Brian Kittler Keith Kline Charles Lalonde Søren Larsen Dagnija Lazdina Thuy P. T. Mai-Moulin Maha Mansoor Edmund Mupondwa Shyam Nair Nathaniel Newlands Liviu Nichiforel Marjo Palviainen John Stanturf Kay Schaubach Johanny Arilexis Perez Sierra Vita Tilvikiene Brian Titus Daniela Thrän Sergio Ugarte Liisa Ukonmaanaho Iveta Varnagyrite-Kabasinkiene Maria WellischAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Nicholas ClarkeAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Arne Verstraeten Elena Gottardini Elena Vanguelova Peter Waldner Nicolas Bruffaerts Anita Nussbaumer Mathias Neumann Nicholas Clarke Karin Hansen Pasi Rautio Liisa UkonmaanahoAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Frode Sundnes Marianne Karlsson Froukje Maria Platjouw Salar Valinia Nicholas Clarke Øyvind KasteAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Nicholas ClarkeAbstract
No abstract has been registered