Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
5480338 | Journal of Cleaner Production | 2017 | 9 Pages |
Abstract
China is the largest country in grain production and consumption with the greatest emission of greenhouse gas (GHG) in the world. To learn the historical changes and regional differences in GHG emission of the major grain crop production can provide important references to the mitigation of GHG emission in the country and other similar countries. Therefore, we quantified the carbon footprints of rice (Oryza sativa L.), wheat (Triticumaestivum L.) and maize (Zea mays L.) production based on agricultural inputs in the country over the period of 1978-2012. The results showed that area-scaled carbon footprint of rice, wheat and maize production increased gradually from 1286, 937 and 895 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) haâ1 in 1978-2682, 2978 and 2294 kg CO2-eq haâ1 in 2012, respectively, and the average increase rates for the three crops were correspondingly 41, 60 and 41 kg CO2-eq haâ1 aâ1. During the last ten years, however, all the average yield-scaled carbon footprints of rice, wheat and maize decreased by 0.11 kg CO2-eq kgâ1 10aâ1. Chemical fertilizer contributed the largest ratio to the total GHG emission by 66, 68 and 76% for rice, wheat and maize, respectively. Significant increasing contribution ratio to the carbon footprint was found in the electricity used for crop irrigation. There were large differences in both the area- and yield-scaled carbon footprints among the cropping regions with the lowest GHG emission occurring in the major cropping regions. Our findings indicate a great potential to reduce GHG emission of grain production through optimizing the spatial layout of cropping region and enhancing chemical fertilizer use efficiency. Further efforts also need to be made on water-saving irrigation to decrease the electricity usage.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Energy
Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
Authors
Xiaomin Huang, Changqing Chen, Haoyu Qian, Mingzhou Chen, Aixing Deng, Jun Zhang, Weijian Zhang,