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Nitrogen budgets cover pools and flows of nitrogen (N) contained in human-made goods and compounds, wich may potentially affect the global nitrogen cycle and in consequence the human environment. Acknowledging the importance of food and other agricultural products, this paper additionally investigates frequently neglected flows of N related to consumers and estimates their magnitude, using Austria in 2010 as an example. Specifically, N in non-food industrial products (synthetic & natural polymers, wood & paper products, waste), and N related to pets, gardens, and energy use is considered. Over the last five decades, both food and material consumption have increased distinctly. While food supply accounts for 52% of total directly consumer-related nitrogen inflows covered in this study (66,000t Na^1), also material products account for a considerable share of 28% (36,000t Na^1). N application in gardens (12%) and N in pet food (7%) do also play a role. Quantified outflows are human excretion (54%), food waste (13%), garden waste (16%), material waste (7%) and waste from pets (10%). The detected balance surplus of 34,000t Na^1, corresponding to 27% of total inflows, points to some accumulation of N in the form of durable consumer goods and to potentially missing flows. The analysis focusses on the apparent knowledge gaps. Especially flows involving material products are poorly understood and would require better understanding of nitrogen contents of products and of waste. This indicates that improvements may be possible by providing more complete nitrogen budgets in the future that cover all environmental pools.

Emission trading scheme was devised to lower the cost of achieving greenhouse gas emission reductions emissions are reduced where it is cheapest and emission certificates are then traded to meet the nomial targets for each participant. However, carbon markets, like other commodity markets, are volatile. Thy react to stochastic "disequilibrium" spot prices, which may be affected by inadequate policies, speculations and bubbles. The market-based emission trading, therefore, does not necessarily minimize abatement cots and achieve emission reduction goals. We introduce a basic stochastic trading model allowing analysisof the robustness of emission reduction policies under irreversibility, asymmetric information and othermultiple anthropogenic and natural uncertainties. We illustrate functioning of the robust market with numerica results involving such countries as US, Australia, Canada, Japan, EU27, Russia, Ukraine, China. In particular we analyze if knowledge about uncertainties may affect portfolios of technological and trade policies an how uncertainty characteristics may influence market prices and change the market structure.

Nitrogen is an essential element to living organisms. Thus it is indispensable in agriculture, and italso is the primary ingredient of fertilizers. Nevertheless, an excess of this boost to plant growth leads to several envronmental problems.

This paper compares existing livestock emissions and projections on three different spatial levels (global, European, national) and on two sets of system boundaries (inventory data and emission data considering the whole lifecycle). It aims to provide insight in the validity of scenario data of national Austrian livestock emissions. This entails the use of national greenhouse gas emission trends until 2030 - specifically for Austria - as well as EU-based assessments of country emssions up to 2050. In addition, global emission data was extracted from the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) database for the years 2000-2100. Extending national emission projections up to 2100 by combining different datasets connect national emission policies to international strategies. It becomes clear that the goal of keeping average global temperture rise under 2 degrees C (represented by RCP2.6), even in the medium term to 2030 and only looking at the livestock sector, ismuch more ambitious than any of the national projections. Furthermore, inventory emission data is set in contrast to emision data considering the whole lifecycle of meat products in Austria, with an overview of assessments from pork and beef production. Emissions reported in inventories represent roughly half of those assigned to the livestock sector in life cycle studies.

The revision of the IIASA's integrated assessment model GAINS allowed for adoption of new cost estimates for ammonia abatement as developed in the framework of the Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen (TFRN). Here we describe key features and methods of the agricultural module of the GAINS model, discuss update of ammonia reduction cost, and recent applications of the revised model in discussion of the future European ecosystem and air quality. As ammonia is predominantly released from agriculture, also abatement needs to prioritize the same economic sector. The revision of GAINS also accommodates for the TFRN's concept to focus measures towards larger installations and void calling for emission reductions on small farms. The overall lower cost of ammonia abatement influence optimization towards applying more strict ammonia abatement, which will decrease overall abatement cost but not necessarily costs for ammonia abatement (as these are cosidered to be applied more readily). Finally, new analysis of reduction targets following optimized versus more even distribution of reduction measures, shows potential for synergies that could help in finalizing agreement on how future emission reduction targets could be achieved.

Carbon markets, like other commodity markets, are volatile. They react to stochastic "disequilibrium" spot prices, which may be affected by inadequate policies, speculations and bubbles. The market-based emission trading, therefore, does not necessarily minimize abatement costs and achieve emission reduction goals. We introduce a basic stochastic model integrating emissions reduction, monitoring and trading costs allowing us to analyze the robustness of emission and uncertainty reduction policies under environmental safety constraints asymmetric information and other multiple anthropogenic and natural uncertainties. Explicit treatment of uncertainties provides incentives for reducing them before trading. We illustrate functioning of the robust market with numerical results involving such countries as the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, EU27, Russia, Ukraine. In particular, we analyze if the knowledge about uncertainties may affect portfolios of technological and trade policies or structure of the market and how uncertainty characteristics may affect market prices and change the market structure.

Environmental effects of reactive nitrogen (Nr) are a result of intense anthropogenic activities.1 Thy are evident in different parts of the world. Proper treatment is, inter alia, a scale issue. With individual countries in mostof Europe too small for comprehensive coverage of all effects, regulation of pollution in Europe co-emerged with political inegration in general. In this article, we describe the most important frameworks of international regulation in Europe. We als discuss the interaction of such institutional setting with the scientific initiatives at the samelevel, and finaly assess how scientific results have been fed with some success into strategies to mitigate pollution levels.

In the latest (fifth) assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) non-CO2 emssions accounted for 28% of total GHG emissions in 2010, when measured on the basis of their global warming potential (relative to CO2) over a 100-year and nitrous oxide (N2O) accounting for about half of all non-CO2 GHGs. With population and incomes increasing, especially in emerging economies, these emissions could grow significantly in the future. Other major sources of non-CO2 GHGs are fugitive CH4 from the extraction and distribution of fossil fuels, N2O from industrial production of nitric and adipic acid, as well as fluorinated gases (F-gases) from a range of industrial manufacturing and product uses. This paper analyses the emissions and cost impacts of mitigation of non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs) at a global level, in scenarios which are focused on meeting a range of long-term temperature goals (LTTGs). The paper demonstrates how an integrated assessment model (TIAM-Grantham) representing CO2 emissions (and their mitigation) from the fossil fuel combustion and industrial sectors is coupled with a model covering non-CO2 emissions (GAINS) in order to provide a complete picture of GHG emissions in a reference scenario in which there is no mitigation of either CO2 or non-CO2 gases, as well as in scenarios in which both CO2 and non-CO2 gases are mitigated in order to achieve different LTTGs.

Der Österreichische Sachstandsbericht Klimawandel 2014 (AAR14) stellt einen IPCC-ähnlichen Bericht dar, bestehend aus drei Bänden, für den bestehendes Wissen zum Klimawandel in Österreich, zu dessen Auswirkungen und den Erfordernissen und Möglichkeiten der Minderung und Anpassung zusammengefasst wird. Der Bericht verfolgt das Ziel, den wissenschaftlichen Kenntnisstand für Österreich kohärent und vollständig darzulegen und dies in Form von politikrelevanten Analysen an die Österreichische Bundesregierung und politische Entscheidungsgremien auf allen Ebenen zu übermitteln, und will darüber hinaus Entscheidungsgrundlagen auch für den privaten Sektor und einen Wissensfundus für akademische Institutionen bereitstellen. Ähnlich den IPCC-Sachstandsberichten liegt dem AAR14 das Prinzip zugrunde, entscheidungsrelevant zu sein, aber keinen empfehlenden Charakter zu haben. Rund 240 österreichische Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler haben in einer gemeinsamen, dreijährigen Anstrengung diesen ersten Sachstandsbericht zum Klimawandel in Österreich erarbeitet und damit den aktuellen Stand des Wissens zu Ausprägungen des Klimawandels in Österreich, seinen Folgen, Minderungs- und Anpassungsmaßnahmen zusammengestellt.

As a potent greenhouse gas and contributor to stratospheric ozone depletion, nitrous oxide (N2O) represents a global pollutant of growing concern. We use the N2O example to consider the potential for Green Economy thinking to promote sustainability through emission reduction. A fundamental barrier to change arises from the distinction between "Sector View" (green actions consistent with improved profit) and "Societal View" (incorporating the value of all externalities). Bringing these views closer together requires a long-term perspective, while counting all co-benefits of taking action. N2O control should be considered within the context of the wider nitrogen cycle, with an emphasis on improving full-chain nitrogen use efficiency (NUEfc), exploiting a combination of technical measures in agriculture, industry, transport, waste water management and other combustion sources. Avoiding excessive meat and dairy consumption by citizens in developed countries can substantially reduce N2O emissions. These measures offer many options for low-cost control of N2O emissions, while reducing the health and ecosystem threats of other N pollution forms. In order to bring the "nitrogen green economy" forward, a much stronger public profile is needed to motivate citizens' actions and to encourage investment in bringing new technologies to profitability. A recent estimate suggests that improving global NUEfc by 20% would provide a N-saving worth ~23 billion USD to business, plus health and environmental benefits worth ~160 billion USD. The value of externalities highlights the green economy case for governments to develop a suite of instruments to go further in controlling N2O emissions than the Sector View would typically allow.

FarmClim aims at contributing to a more considerate use of nitrogen in Austrian agriculture. The transdisciplinary research project attempts to tackle the .science-policy gap. by using a participatory approach, that is, stakeholders influence the research process as much as the scientists strive for the implementation of their ideas. This paper describes the project design and communication processes. Full integration of practice partners adds to the complexity of the project's structure, but brings consider able benefits right from the outset. Taking advantage of the existing institutional setting of FarmClim partners, we expect to maintain expert consultancy beyond the lifetime of the project, helping agriculture to meet the challenges of environmental and economic performance of a producing agriculture.

The supply chain of a product is essential for understanding its environmental impacts. As parts of agricultural product supply chains, land use (LU) and land use change (LUC) are considered to be major contributors to global CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, LU and LUC (LULUC) are rarely included in GHG estimations for food and feedstuffs. Here we propose a method which can be used to derive emissions from LU and LUC on a regional level. Emissions are distributed over an accounting period chosen to match the physically occurring carbon fluxes. As fluxes from soil organic carbon persist for years or even for decades after a LUC episode, depending on the climatic conditions of the region, we apply 10 and 20 years as suitable accounting periods for tropical and temperate climate zones, respectively. We compare the proposed method with two other methods proposed in the literature. Using two types of feedstuffs (Brazilian soybean-meal and Austrian barley) as examples, we find that the other two methods produce mostly lower emission estimates in the case of Brazilian soybeans, and higher estimates for Austrian barley. We conclude that these differences are caused mainly by different accounting periods and by a (non)consideration of regional specificities. While analysing life cycles necessarily entails a well supported -- but still arbitrary -- setting of such system boundaries, we argue that the methodology presented here better reflects actually occurring carbon fluxes that we understand to be the foundation of any environmental product assessment. KEYWORDS Land use; Land use change; Agriculture; Greenhouse gas emissions; GHG; Feedstuffs

Technology design and effectiveness studies available in the scientific literature demonstrate future mitigation potentials of nitrogen-related greenhouse gases. Here we investigate "innovations" influencing such emissions. These innovations mainly address agriculture: reduced meat diets, urban gardening, genetically modified crops, and precision farming, but also more distant options such as vertical farming and cultured meat production, that is, indoor agriculture. While the latter approaches, which allow full management of effluents, seem very promising in terms of emission control, the cost estimates available would rule out any practical relevance. Technologies that currently seem more realistic offer much smaller mitigation potential. Information on energy need, greenhouse gas emissions, and land requirements feed into a semi-quantitative assessment, which delivers information in a format useful for existing European policy tools.

In this paper we use nitrogen (N) footprints as indicators of potential environmental impacts of food production in Austria. These footprints trace the losses of reactive nitrogen (Nr), i.e. N compounds that are generally accessible to biota, in connection to the chain of food production and consumption. While necessary for food production, Nr is known for its negative environmental impacts. The N footprints presented here describe Nr losses but do not link to effects directly. In deriving N footprints, Nr lost along the production chain needs to be quantified, expressed as "virtual nitrogen factors" (VNF). We calculated specific VNF for Austrian production conditions for a set of eight broad food categories (poultry, pork, beef, milk, vegetables & fruit, potatoes, legumes, cereals). The life-cycle oriented nitrogen footprints for the respective food groups were replenished by assessing Nr losses related to energy needs and to food consumption. The results demonstrate that in general, animal based products are less nitrogen-efficient than plant based products. For meat, footprints range from 64 g N per kg (pork) to 134 g N per kg (beef). For vegetable products, footprints are between 5 g N per kg (potatoes) and 22 g N per kg (legumes). The detailed ranking of food products is different when relating nitrogen footprints to either simple mass of food, or protein content. Vegetables & fruit cause only 9 g N per kg, but 740 g N per kg protein, which is even higher than pork (616 g N per kg protein) or poultry (449 g N per kg protein). These differences clearly show that taking into account protein and other aspects of food quality may be crucial for a proper assessment of dietary choices. The total N footprint per Austrian inhabitant is dominated by food production and consumption (85%) but also includes other activities linked to fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere (notably combustion). The average N footprint is 19.8 kg N per year per Austrian inhabitant, which is on

The human alteration of the nitrogen cycle has evolved from minimal in the mid-19th century to extensive in the present time. The consequences to human and environmental health are significant. While much attention has been given to the extent and impacts of the alteration, little attention has been given to those entities (i.e., consumers, institutions) that use the resources that result in extensive reactive nitrogen (Nr) creation. One strategy for assessment is the use of nitrogen footprint tools. A nitrogen footprint is generally defined as the total amount of Nr released to the environment as a result of an entity's consumption patterns. This paper reviews a number of nitrogen footprint tools (N-Calculator, N-Institution, N-Label, N-Neutrality, N-Indicator) that are designed to provide that attention. It reviews N-footprint tools for consumers as a function of the country that they live in (N-Calculator, N-Indicator) and the products they buy (N-Label), for the institutions that people work in and are educated in (N-Institution), and for events and decision-making regarding offsets (N-Neutrality). N footprint tools provide a framework for people to make decisions about their resource use and show them how offsets can be coupled with behavior change to decrease consumer/institution contributions to N-related problems.

Radiatively active atmospheric trace constituents consist of the following groups of compounds: long-lived greenhouse gases with residence times of years, subject to international conventions; short-lived gases formed in the atmosphere from precursor compounds, remaining in the atmosphere for hours or days: notably ozone; and aerosols, that is, airborne particles interacting with short-wave radiation with both direct and indirect effects. The "direct effect" covers scattering or absorption of light, while the "indirect effect" describes the particles. contribution to cloud formation and their resulting influence on reflecting sunlight. This chapter covers these quite diverse compounds with respect to their relevance for Austria. The Austrian national greenhouse gas inventory demonstrates the importance of the energy sector for emissions of the long-lived greenhouse gases. Out of the total emissions, 79% are considered energy related (of which about one third is due to road transport, and a quarter describes energy use from industry), 13% are derived from industrial processes, and 9% from agriculture. Carbon uptake in forest biomass represents a sink of a few percentage points of total emissions. Variations of emissions have occurred since 1990, but no trends are seen for most sectors. A strong increase in transport emissions and a simultaneous decline of the forest sink at the same time has resulted in an overall increase of the Austrian greenhouse gas emissions of 19% over the last 20 years. Variations in Austrian emissions do not notably affect the results of measurements at Sonnblick Observatory, where concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane reflect the global situation. A relationship between emissions and concentrations only becomes evident for short-lived compounds. Reducing the emissions of precursors helped decrease ozone concentrations while the regional background has remained constant. Furthermore, the emissions and concentration

Over the course of a three-year process, Austrian scientists researching in the field of climate change have produced an assessment report on climate change in Austria following the model of the IPCC Assessment Reports. In this extensive work, more than 200 scientists depict the state of knowledge on climate change in Austria and the impacts, mitigation and adaptation strategies, as well as the associated known political, economic and social issues. The Austrian Climate Research Program (ACRP) of the Klima- und Energiefonds (Climate and Energy Fund) has enabled this work by financing the coordinating activities and material costs. The extensive and substantial body of work has been carried out gratuitously by the researchers. This summary for policy makers provides the most significant general statements. First, the climate in Austria in the global context is presented; next the past and future climate is depicted, followed by a summary for Austria on the main consequences and measures. The subsequent section then provides more detail on individual sectors. More extensive explanations can be found -- in increasing detail -- in the synthesis report and in the full report (Austrian Assessment Report, 2014), both of which are available in bookstores and on the Internet. The uncertainties are described using the IPCC procedure where three different approaches are provided to express the uncertainties depending on the nature of the available data and on the nature of the assessment of the accuracy and completeness of the current scientific understanding of the authors. For a qualitative estimation, the uncertainty is described using a two-dimensional scale where a relative assessment is given on the one hand for the quantity and the quality of evidence (i.e. information from theory, observations or models indicating whether an assumption or assertion holds true or is valid), and on the other hand to the degree of agreement in the literature. This approach uses a series o

Human activities affect the impact of the nitrogen cycle on both the environment and climate. The rate of anthropogenic nitrogen fixation from atmospheric N2 may serve as an indicator to the magnitude of this impact, acknowledging that relationship to be effect-dependent and non-linear. Building on the set of Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios developed for climate change research, we estimate anthropogenic industrial nitrogen fixation throughout the 21st century. Assigning characteristic key drivers to the four underlying scenarios we arrive at nitrogen fixation rates for agricultural use of 80 to 172 Tg N/yr by 2100, which is slightly less to almost twice as much compared with the fixation rate for the year 2000. We use the following key drivers of change, varying between scenarios: population growth, consumption of animal protein, agricultural efficiency improvement and additional biofuel production. Further anthropogenic nitrogen fixation for production of materials such as explosives or plastics and from combustion are projected to remain considerably smaller than that related to agriculture. While variation among the four scenarios is considerable, our interpretation of scenarios constrains the option space: several of the factors enhancing the anthropogenic impact on the nitrogen cycle may occur concurrently, but never all of them. A scenario that is specifically targeted towards limiting greenhouse gas emissions ends up as the potentially largest contributor to nitrogen fixation, as a result of large amounts of biofuels required and the fertilizer used to produce it. Other published data on nitrogen fixation towards 2100 indicate that our high estimates based on the RCP approach are rather conservative. Even the most optimistic scenario estimates that nitrogen fixation rate will remain substantially in excess of an estimate of sustainable boundaries by 2100.

Il capitolo mostra i risultati degli esercizi di valutazione del rischio ozono per le foreste della Valle Camonica. L'esercizio ha visto la compbinazione di misure sul terreno con campionatori passivi e laboratori mobili, e di strumenti modellistici ad ampia scala.

In earlier work, we compared the amount of newly fixed nitrogen (N, as synthetic fertilizer and biologically fixed N) entering agricultural systems globally to the total emission of nitrous oxide (N2O). We obtained an N2O emission factor (EF) of 3-5%, and applied it to biofuel production. For "first-generation" biofuels, e.g. biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from corn (maize), that require N fertilizer, NO from biofuel production could cause (depending on N uptake efficiency) as much or more global warming as that avoided by replacement of fossil fuel by the biofuel. Our subsequent calculations in a follow-up paper, using published life cycle analysis (LCA) models, led to broadly similar conclusions. The N2O EF applies to agricultural crops in general, not just to biofuel crops, and has made possible a top-down estimate of global emissions from agriculture. Independent modelling by another group using bottom-up IPCC inventory methodology has shown good agreement at the global scale with our top-down estimate. Work by Davidson showed that the rate of accumulation of N2O in the atmosphere in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries was greater than that predicted from agricultural inputs limited to fertilizer N and biologically fixed N (Davidson, E.A. 2009 Nat. Geosci. 2:659-662). However, by also including soil organic N mineralized following land-use change and NOx deposited from the atmosphere in our estimates of the reactive N entering the agricultural cycle, we have now obtained a good fit between the observed atmospheric N2O concentrations from 1860 to 2000 and those calculated on the basis of a 4 percent EF for the reactive N.

This paper describes the development of emission scenarios for non-CO2 greenhouse gases in the European Union as consistent with the energy scenarios used for the EU Low carbon Roadmap 2050. The analysis includes estimates of technical mitigation potentials and costs for mitigation of these gases until 2050 in the 27 EU member states. Results show that it would be technically possible to cut overall emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases by about half between base year 2005 and 2050 in both of the energy scenarios defined. The adoption of mitigation efforts already in the baseline will, however, significantly depend on the expected development in the carbon price levels in the EU-ETS and non-ETS sectors.

Using the GAINS (Greenhouse Gas-Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies) model, we derived Annex I marginal abatement cost curves for the years 2020 and 2030 for three World Energy Outlook baseline scenarios (2007-2009) of the International Energy Agency. These cost curves are presented by country, by greenhouse gas and by sector. They are available for further inter-country comparisons in the GAINS Mitigation Efforts Calculator-a free online tool. We illustrate the influence of the baseline scenario on the shape of mitigation cost curves, and identify key low cost options as well as no-regret priority investment areas for the years 2010-2030. Finally, we show the co-effect of GHG mitigation on the emissions of local air pollutants and argue that these co-benefits offer strong local incentives for mitigation.