NEWS - OUT AND ABOUT

‘The Carbon Benefits Project’

Dr Eleanor Milne to speak about this timely work on Thursday 19 November at the University of Leicester

It is now widely accepted that human-induced rises in levels of green house gases pose a considerable threat to the planet through global warming. The Carbon Benefits Project will develop ways to model and monitor green house gas emissions and the absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere which result from land use change, thus helping efforts to reduce the impacts of global warming.

Currently, it is estimated that human activities emit greenhouse gases equivalent to over 50 billion tonnes of CO2 each year. The majority of emissions come from fossil fuel use, however about 30% of these emissions come from the way we use our land (for example the clearing of forests, the way we use our soils and produce our food).

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) supports many projects which use land in a more sustainable manner, in ways which not only reduce green house gas emissions but also absorb CO2 from the atmosphere thereby partially mitigating some of the impacts of global warming.

The Carbon Benefits Project will provide a standard way for GEF and other sustainable land management projects to measure, monitor and project Carbon benefits. It will provide a credible, comprehensive system for using remote sensing images and global data sets, taking samples and measurements on the ground, compiling and managing and analysing data.

Dr Eleanor Milne, Honorary Visiting Fellow of the University of Leicester’s Department of Geography and Associate Scientist at Colorado State University, is co-ordinating Component A of the project which is led by Colorado State University. The work involves a team of researchers from eight countries and includes researchers in existing projects in China, Niger/Nigeria, Kenya and the Brazilian Amazon. Inclusion of these projects will ensure that the system is developed to meet the needs of projects in a wide range of circumstances including different climates, land uses, social, economic and cultural situations.

This project has the potential to produce a world class protocol which could be used by all sustainable land management projects in the future, to show the impacts they have in terms of reducing or mitigating green house gas emissions.

Dr Milne’s seminar will take place at 4pm on Thursday 19 November in Seminar Room F75a, 1st Floor Bennett Building at the University of Leicester.