Availability of disaggregated greenhouse gas emissions from beef cattle production: a systematic review

Environmental Impact Assessment Review
John Lynch

Abstract

Agriculture is a significant source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and beef cattle are particularly emissions intensive. GHG emissions are typically expressed as a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) 'carbon footprint' per unit output. The 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP100) is the most commonly used CO2e metric, but others have also been proposed, and there is no universal reason to prefer GWP100 over alternative metrics. The weightings assigned to non-CO2 GHGs can differ significantly depending on the metric used, and relying upon a single metric can obscure important differences in the climate impacts of different GHGs. This loss of detail is especially relevant to beef production systems, as the majority of GHG emissions (as conventionally reported) are in the form of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), rather than CO2. This paper presents a systematic literature review of harmonised cradle to farm-gate beef carbon footprints from bottom-up studies on individual or representative systems, collecting the emissions data for each separate GHG, rather than a single CO2e value. Disaggregated GHG emissions could not be obtained for the majority of studies, highlighting the loss of information resulting fr...Continue Reading

Citations

Sep 20, 2019·Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems·John Lynch, Raymond Pierrehumbert
Jun 23, 2020·Global Food Security·G R SalmonA R Peters
Jun 2, 2020·The Science of the Total Environment·Ciara BeausangFionnuala Murphy
Apr 12, 2021·Journal of Environmental Management·Verena AngererMatthias Gauly
Jun 29, 2021·SSM - Population Health·Hari S IyerChristopher D Golden
Sep 1, 2021·Environmental Technology·Amanda LacaMario Díaz

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BETA
footprinting

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R Core
R
GTP

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