Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

The Canadian and provincial governments are currently determining how they will achieve a national net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target by 2050 set on June 29, 2021, and more urgently, equally ambitious 2030 targets. These targets are essential to our global commitments required to avoid the most catastrophic outcomes of climate breakdown. Agriculture has been identified as a key industry for helping meet emissions targets. Agriculture is absolutely an essential service but contributes a sizable (8.2%) and growing proportion of national emissions as other sectors reduce their emissions. Of agriculture's growing emissions, 38% can be attributed to soil management and nitrous oxides and another 14% to manure management. Ideally, producers would immediately adopt beneficial management practices (BMPs) that are most likely to minimize these GHG emissions. Given BMPs typically require additional costs, they are not likely to be adopted without sizable government incentives or clear demonstration that they improve crop yield or profitability in the context of an increasingly disruptive climate. The critical challenge at this time of urgency is the crop and region-specific quantification, through direct, accurate measurement, of the benefits achieved by BMPs. Provincial governments are currently in the process of rapidly scaling up the adoption of BMPs through a suite of programs that provide incentives, demonstration and/or outreach. There is a pressing need to identify the most effective BMPs by quantifying GHG emissions to evaluate their mitigation potential and associated adaptation co-benefits for a variety of existing alternatives and new practices and technologies currently under development. These need to be appropriate for Canada's diversity of production and evaluated accurately for a wide range of climate and soil conditions, which are key mediators of emissions and resilience. BC is an ideal location for this work as there are over 200 commodities, many of them high value, the soils are the most diverse in the country, and we are the home of major technology innovation. Furthermore, BC producers are already facing extreme climate anomalies leading to unprecedented fluctuations in soil water availability (e.g. flooding in winter/spring, drought during the growing season) which impacts GHG emissions. Therefore, it is now more important than ever to develop advanced strategies that consider the relationship of GHG emissions to rainfall, drainage, and irrigation. Our team is requesting funding to support and substantially increase the team's capacity to meet the immediate and expanding need for in-situ quantification for on-farm trials of BMPs and innovative agricultural products and technologies. Our objectives are to: 1. Meet the increasing demand for identifying pathways to reduce agricultural emissions and 2. Disentangle the complex biophysical relationships that mediate carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide fluxes.