The issue
Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) drive global warming. Many countries, including the UK, have committed to a net zero emissions economy. To find solutions to reduce or minimise carbon and other GHG emissions, it is essential that sources are identified and the processes and biogeochemical cycles involved are fully understood.
To drive down greenhouse gas emissions, we need to identify where they come from and ensure that the processes involved are fully understood.
Our role
We undertake long-term national surveys of both natural and managed environments, focusing on carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, and indirect emission pathways from water-land-air ecosystems. We make a major contribution to the UK national and international GHG emissions inventories, providing GHG flux measurements and improving the mechanistic understanding of the role that land-use, land-use change and forestry have on those emissions. Our expertise encompasses the regulation of emissions and solutions for carbon sequestration.
Our commitments
- To improve the quantification of GHG fluxes across the UK and identify drivers of change.
- To develop and test practical approaches for enhanced soil carbon sequestration.
- To address a range of questions from the role of bio-fuels in mitigating climate change to the risks of large releases of carbon from permafrost, informing policy at national and international scales.