FST Graduate Research Topic

Research Topic: Data analysis for IPCC greenhouse gas inventory of Alberta and west Canada
Suggested By: Larbi Esmahi
Last Update: December 1st, 2017

Agriculture is economically significant for the development and sustainability of Alberta and west Canada communities. However, agriculture is an important source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) contributing to climate change. The agricultural sector produces nearly 10-15% of Canada's total of GHG emissions. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an important GHG, accounting for 18.5% of the total GHG emissions from Canada's agricultural sector [1]. Parties to the Convention are committed to develop, publish and regularly update national emission inventories of greenhouse gases. However, emissions from livestock and crops depend on many factors, such as animal type, their weight and age, type of animal housing and manure storage and application, weather, and soil type. Thus, an accurate inventory should calculate total national emissions, identify the major sources and spatial variation, and hence develop effective abatement policies. The inventory methods developed by the IPCC for estimating national-level GHG inventories are comprehensive, globally applicable and empirical [2]. The IPCC inventory methodology can be a practical, first-order approach using simple default EFs and addresses the anthropogenic effect on sources and sinks of GHG gases. Over the past 25-30 years, there have been rapid advances in various areas of computer information technologies and applications (e.g. complex programming and algorithms, semantic technologies, high resolution visualization and web online processing). These new and emerging technologies are providing unprecedented opportunities to develop agricultural database and GHG inventory that will provide valuable information of Alberta and west Canada. The objectives of the proposed program are to transform data of Canada Statistics into GHG inventory database and modify our previous IPCC inventory code (Visual Studio C++) [3]. This will help analyze and assess the combined environmental effects from agricultural activities using data analytic techniques and geographical information system (GIS) and inform the future well-being and sustainability, thereby providing a new tool to help design more informative monitoring systems and experiments, assess cumulative effects of non-point source pollution and inform agricultural decision. This research topic is suitable for Project, Thesis, and Essay route students. This research will be conducted with the collaboration of Prof Junye Wang and Dr. Larbi Esmahi. The student will be a member of the CAIP Research Chair team in Computational Sustainability and Environmental Analytics at Athabasca University. We will provide some research assistantship for potential peer-review publications. How to apply for the position, send an email to Prof Junye Wang at junyew@athabascau.ca or Dr. Larbi Esmahi with a detailed CV. Bibliography [1] http://www.wri.org/resources/data-sets/cait-country-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data . [2] https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/vol4.html [3] J Wang, LM Cardenas, TH Misselbrook, S Gilhespy, Development and application of a detailed inventory framework for estimating nitrous oxide and methane emissions from agriculture, Atmospheric Environment 45 (2011) 1454-1463.