Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
forest ecosystems in order to estimate the fraction of the Net Ecosystem Production
lost as reduced carbon and to assess the impact of BVOCs in the formation of ozone
and secondary organic aerosols.
The cropland ecosystems with the organic carbon stock in mineral soils and in
permanent woody structure of perennial tree crops also play a key role in the ter-
restrial carbon budget. In this topic an assessment of the total soil organic carbon
(SOC) stock in the top 30 cm of mineral soil for the whole Italian territory, accord-
ing to the different land use types of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) cropland category (arable land, agroforestry, vineyards, olive
groves, orchards and rice fields), has been performed as a basis for future land use
scenarios and to address mitigation policy at country level.
Also nitrous oxide (N
2
O) emissions from several Italian croplands along a latitu-
dinal gradient as well as the relationship between N
2
O production and applied N fer-
tilization rate were analyzed and empirically derived from experimental sites in order
to assess the effect of climate variability on N
2
O emissions for Italian crops and to
verify the reliability of internationally applied emission factors for temperate crops.
The effects of climate and management practices on the carbon balance in the
soil and in the perennial woody biomass have been particularly investigated for
Italian vineyard ecosystems. Moreover, regional case studies have been focused
of different managements in cropland and grassland ecosystems and on the conse-
quence on the effect on the soil organic carbon of the abandonment of agricultural
land and the natural or artificial afforestation.
1.3 Results
The main results presented in the next chapters have been grouped and further
elaborated in order to provide a comprehensive assessment of the whole national
greenhouse gases budget of terrestrial ecosystems. The values of Gross Primary
Production (GPP) and Net Ecosystems Production (NEP) referred to the total
Italian surface as well as the main national emissions of BVOCs and N
2
O and CH
4
have been assessed and are reported in the Tables
1.1
,
1.2
and
1.3
.
Table 1.1
Carbon fixed in Italian natural ecosystems
Parameter
Unit value (g C m
2
y
−
1
)
Total carbon uptake
from natural ecosys-
tems (Mt C y
Comments
−
1
)
NEE
−
227
(25 %:
−
264; 75 %:
−
191)
62.3
Median and interquartile
range of empirical upscaling
using artificial neural network
(ANN) trained with eddy
covariance data (Luyssaert
et al.
2012
) (Chap.
2
).
The national area of natural
ecosystems includes forest-
land, cropland and grass-
land, and has been derived
from Corine Land Cover 2006
(CLC
2006
)
849
(25 %: 811; 75 %: 891)
233
GPP
