Whole-farm greenhouse gas emissions from a backgrounding beef production system using an observation-based and model-based approach
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Stewart, A. A., Alemu, A. W., Ominski, K. H., Wilson, C. H., Tremorin, D. G., Wittenberg, K. M., Tenuta, M. and Janzen, H. H. 2014. Whole-farm greenhouse gas emissions from a backgrounding beef production system using an observation-based and model-based approach. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 94: 463-477. Backgrounding, raising weaned beef cattle in preparation for finishing in a feedlot, is a common practice in western Canadian beef production systems. The objectives of this study were: (i) to assess the whole-farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a pasture-based backgrounding system using an observation-based and model-based approach and (ii) to compare model-based estimated emissions with observation-based emissions from the key components of the farm, in order to identify the knowledge gaps that merit further study. For the observation-based approach, emissions were garnered from a multi-disciplinary field study that examined three fertility treatments applied to the pasture grazed by beef cattle: (i) no liquid hog manure application (control); (ii) split application of liquid hog manure, half applied in fall and half in spring (split) and (iii) single spring application of liquid hog manure (single). The model-based approach used a systems-based model, adapted from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change algorithms, to estimate annual net farm GHG emissions from the three fertility treatments and a hypothetical synthetic fertilizer treatment. Total farm emissions included methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from farm components and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy use. Net farm GHG emissions using the observation-based approach ranged from 0.4 to 2.2 Mg CO2 eq ha-1 and from 4.2 to 6.5 kg CO2 eq kg-1 liveweight gain exported; the model-based approach resulted in net farm emissions ranged from 0.6 to 3.7 Mg CO2 eq ha-1 and from 7.0 to 12.9 kg CO2 eq kg-1 liveweight gain exported. Except in the control treatment, both enteric CH4 and soil N2O emissions were the major contributors to total farm emissions. Emissions intensity for the hypothetical synthetic fertilizer treatment (9.4 kg CO2 eq kg-1 liveweight gain) was lower than for the split and single scenarios. Although individual GHG emission estimates varied appreciably, trends in emissions intensity were similar between the two approaches. Efforts to reduce GHG emissions should be directed towards components such as enteric CH4 and soil N2O, which have larger impacts on overall system emissions.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it