Beetles Modify Emissions of Greenhouse Gases from Cow Pats

Aug. 22, 2013 — Cattle contribute to global warming by burping and farting large amounts of greenhouse gases. Some of the same gases are also emitted from cow pats on pastures. But now researchers from the University of Helsinki have found that beetles living in cow pats may reduce emissions of the key greenhouse gas -- methane.

Agriculture is one of the biggest sources of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Among these, cattle farming for meat and milk are major sources of methane, a gas with a potent warming effect. Much of this methane comes from the guts of ruminating cattle, but some escapes from dung pats on pastures. Now researchers from the University of Helsinki have found that beetles living in the cow pats may reduce emissions of methane. The study has just been published in the journal PLoS ONE.

Atte Penttilä, who undertook the study for his Masters, explains: "Cow pats offer a prime food for a large number of organisms. In fact, there are probably as many beetle species living in dung as there are bird species on this planet."

Of the dung beetles living in Northern Europe, most spend their entire lives within the dung pats. "We believe that these beetles exert much of their impact by simply digging around in the dung. Methane is primarily born under anaerobic conditions, and the tunneling by beetles seems to aerate the pats. This will have a major impact on how carbon escapes from cow pats into the atmosphere."

Continued

From Farm to Table, Mealworms May Be the Next Best Food

Dec. 19, 2012 — Food enthusiasts interested in sustainable farm practices may soon have a new meat alternative: insects. Beetle larvae (called mealworms) farms produce more edible protein than traditional farms for chicken, pork, beef or milk, for the same amount of land used, according to research published Dec. 19 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Dennis Oonincx and colleagues from the University of Wageningen, Netherlands.

The researchers compared the environmental impact of meat production on a mealworm farm to traditional animal farms using three parameters: Land usage, energy needs, and greenhouse gas emissions. From the start of the process to the point that the meat left the farm, they found that mealworms scored better than the other foods. Per unit of edible protein produced, mealworm farms required less land and similar amounts of energy.

Previous work by the same team, published in PLOS ONE in 2010, has already shown that mealworms themselves produce less greenhouse gases than other animals grown for meat. In this new study, the researchers elaborate on the sustainability of insect proteins as a food by showing that growing mealworms for animal protein requires less land and generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions than chicken, pork, beef or milk.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219173906.htm

Restoring Wales's climate-saving peatlands

Rarer than the rainforest, more effective per acre than the Amazon

March 2012: A massive scheme to restore a large swathe of the Welsh landscape more effective per acre in storing greenhouse gases than the Amazon rainforest was completed earlier this month.

Everyone knows the value of the Amazon rainforest in tackling global warming but few realise a threatened ecosystem on our own doorstep plays a significant role in keeping harmful carbon out of the atmosphere, and even in extracting it from the air.

All of the world's forests combined only store half of the amount of carbon as the world's peatlands, and four per cent of the globe's rarest, deepest and most effective peatland - the blanket bog - is in Wales.

Significant damage has been caused over the years
While healthy peatlands store carbon and draw harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, damaged peatlands actually release greenhouse gases. To tackle this significant problem, the National Trust has led a huge project to revitalise an enormous swathe of blanket bog in North Wales .

National Trust Wales's Wildlife and Countryside adviser Helen Buckingham said: ‘Over the centuries there had been repeated attempts to drain the blanket bog at the head of the Conwy river for shooting and farming, causing significant damage. Since January last year the National Trust has taken on a huge project to dam these drains to reverse the damage, and in just the last 13 months more than 30,000 dams have been built and 300km of drains closed.'

'You can't grow a rainforest overnight'
The near £300,000 damming project on the Migneint near Ysbyty Ifan carried out by local contractors has been funded by a £190,000 ecosystem resilience grant from the Welsh Government, £60,000 grant from the Rivers Trust and investment from the National Trust and the Countryside Council for Wales.

‘You can't grow a rainforest overnight but by blocking drainage ditches and rewetting peatland we can reduce carbon emissions by 2.6 tonnes per hectare, which is the equivalent of running the average family car for a year,' said Helen

‘There are just short of 20,000 hectares in the Special Area of Conservation that covers the Migneint. Peatlands only cover about three per cent of the Earth but they accumulate more carbon than tropical rainforests,' said biogeochemist Nancy Dise of Manchester Metropolitan University in her 2009 paper on global change. In terms of sitting there quietly, year after year, packing away massive amounts of carbon, nothing tops these peatlands.'
http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/welsh-amazon.html