Intensive land-management leaves Europe without carbon sinks

A new calculation of Europe’s greenhouse gas balance shows that emissions of methane and nitrous oxide tip the balance and eliminate Europe’s terrestrial sink of greenhouse-gases.

Researchers from 17 European countries cooperating in the EU-Integrated Project CarboEurope, led by Detlef Schulze, of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany have compiled the first comprehensive greenhouse gas balance of Europe.

A strong carbon sink of -305 Million tonnes of carbon per year exists in European forests and grasslands which could offset 19% of the emission from fossil fuel burning. However this is partly cancelled out by agricultural land and drainage of peat-land  which emits CO_2. The resulting net CO₂ sink of the European continent is 274 Million tonnes of carbon per year – only 15% of the emissions from fossil fuel burning.

However all European ecosystems are managed and as a by-product of land management other powerful greenhouse gases are released – for example nitrous oxide from fertilizers applied to grassland and crops, and methane from ruminants and from peat-lands. These previously neglected emissions of greenhouse gases from land-use cancel out almost the entire carbon sink, leaving the landscape offsetting only some 2% of the CO₂ emissions from households, transport and industry. 

The situation is worse when focusing on the 25 EU states. Here, although forests and grasslands can compensate for 13% of the CO₂ emitted by fossil fuel burning, emission of powerful greenhouse gases from agricultural emissions and peat mining reduces the effectiveness of the land surface sink to 111 Million tonnes of carbon per year, which is only 11% of the CO₂ emitted by fossil fuels. However, since the emissions of methane and nitrous oxide are relatively higher in the European Union the land surface emerges as a greenhouse gas source of 34 Million tonnes of carbon per year. This effectively increases the emissions from fossil fuel burning by another 3%.

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