The GHG-Europe project aims to improve our understanding and capacity for predicting the European terrestrial carbon and greenhouse gas budget.

More than 50 % of the European land surface is used for agricultural and forestry production. Land management directly impacts the terrestrial sources and sinks of greenhouse gases (GHGs).

In the view of climate change it is crucial to know the amount of GHGs released into the atmosphere by anthropogenic activities. But also natural drivers such as climate variability influence the GHG balance of European ecosystems. The attribution of GHG emissions to anthropogenic and natural drivers is the ultimate challenge tackled in the GHG-Europe project and is the precondition to assess the potential for GHG reduction from agriculture and forestry in Europe.

Which part of the terrestrial GHG emissions is anthropogenic?

Which ecosystems are particularly susceptible to changes in climate?

Which options are available in agriculture and forestry management to keep carbon (C) sinks and minimize GHG emissions?

GHG-Europe aims to answer these questions by integrating the results from various national and international data sources in a comprehensive assessment. GHG-Europe will elucidate the contribution of different land use types to the emissions of the three most important GHGs carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrous oxide (N₂O) and methane (CH₄).

Measurements from more than one hundred continental stations distributed across all European climatic regions and ecosystems provide the basis for the integrated assessment.

Scientists synthesize existing long-term data and initiate new measurements in regions which have been investigated only little so far - namely Eastern European forests and Mediterranean shrublands.

The measurements from this network of stations will be used in computer models to project future GHG budgets under changing climate conditions. The models will also include socio-economic effects to address interactions between economic development, land use and GHG emissions.