Quantitative Measurements of Ammonia and Methane Loss from Livestock - Sustainable Animal Agriculture - page 249

For measuring CH 4 emissions from rumi-
nants, the use of FT-SS chambers has seen wide
adoption since they can be easily calibrated and
offer a sensitive measure to emissions attributed
to dietary differences. In this environment the
differences in feed intake can also be easily moni-
tored and removed from the treatment effect. The
SF 6 tracer technique is commonly used for enteric
CH 4 emission measurements as well, but it is gen-
erally accepted to yield greater variability and
hence not as sensitive to treatment differences as
the FT-SS chamber technique. When the SF 6
tracer technique is used in a grazing system,
determining the feed intake (not easily meas-
ured) also confounds treatment differences.
Micrometeorological techniques for measuring

enteric CH 4 emissions from ruminants have more
of a role in developing emission factors for differ-
ent livestock since many of these techniques
require a large scale, e.g. farm or herd, and there-
fore replication needed for mitigation purposes is
more problematic.
In measuring CH 4 and/or NH 3 from
manure, often the outdoor environment is criti-
cal to the emission. In this situation, the micro-
meteorological techniques prove useful since
these techniques are not intrusive. Surface
chamber techniques suffer from spatial sam-
pling variability and typically do not provide a
continuous measure, whereas micrometeoro-
logical techniques are more conducive to con-
tinuous measurements.

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