Using Biogeochemical Process Models to Quantify Greenhouse Gas Mitigation from Agricultural Management

To conduct inventories and monitor climate change mitigation in agriculture, we need to be able to quantify the greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts resulting from different agricultural management activities. While we have a rough, but relatively clear picture about the most important opportunities for mitigating agricultural greenhouse gases (Smith et al. 2008, see Seeberg-Elverfeld and Tapio-Biström, this volume), we have considerably less clarity on how to quantify the changes due to mitigation. The purpose of this chapter is to review process-based biogeochemical modeling as one approach to cost-effective and reliable quantification of agricultural greenhouse gases (GHGs) in agriculture.