Effects of measures on nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture : using INITIATOR and IPCC methods

The mandatory national reporting of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions under the UN Climate Change Convention is usually done with the IPCC inventory approach using default emission factors for N2O emissions from different sources. Although simple and transparent, the drawback is that emissions will change with management and these effects cannot be included. Here we compare results of calculated national N2O emissions with the model INITIATOR and IPCC methods for the year 2000 before and after inclusion of various measures. Although results on a national basis appear to be quite comparable (within 20%), deviations can be large for peat soils and INITIATOR calculates larger reductions in N2O emissions from various emission reduction measures than the IPCC methods. This is logical since changes in the efficiency of use of nitrogen is not included in the IPCC factors. To adequately account for these impacts, the standard IPCC methodology should be updated