Publications

Mischler, P; Ferlicoq, M; Ceschia, E; Kerjose, E (2022). Albedo, a little-known climate change mitigation lever: what mitigation potential for grasslands?. FOURRAGES(251), 1-16.

Abstract
Ruminant livestock farming exacerbates climate change (CC) through land use and its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Grassland management and livestock husbandry (with grazing or not) also affect the climate by modifying the albedo (alpha) of the land surface. Thus, albedo management via the adaptation of livestock management could become a lever for CC mitigation, similar to carbon (C) storage in the soil. The results presented here are derived from daily alpha measurements of 7 French grasslands. The albedo evolves according to variable time steps depending on the meteorological conditions: the presence of frost in autumn - winter generates intra and interday variability of alpha. In spring and summer, it is the rainfall after periods without precipitation, which decreases the alpha for a few days (6.9 %). In the same way, agricultural practices have a more or less important effect on the alpha: mowing of refusals has the least impact: -3.5 % for a few days. This is less than grazing, -3.9 % on average for 2 weeks, whose effect depends on the instantaneous livestock load. Mowing has a more marked effect: -13.7 % for one month. Taking as reference a bare soil, the radiative forcing (RF) of grasslands, calculated from albedo dynamics is negative, which means a cooling effect on the climate. This value is on average more negative in summer (-11.1 W/m(2)) than in winter (-3.1W/m(2)) due to higher alpha levels because of the increased presentation of vegetation combined with higher solar radiation. A farm-scale albedo simulation shows that the average alpha of the crop rotation increases with the proportion of grass areas and suggests that systems relying more on grass would have a favorable RF for CC mitigation. This effect could be enhanced via adaptation of practices on grasslands to preserve and improve surface albedo.

DOI:

ISSN: