Efecto del manejo de la alimentación sobre el balance de carbono en explotaciones de ovino lechero
- N. MANDALUNIZ
- A. Pascual
- I. Batalla
- O. del Hierro
- J.l. Saez
- J. Arranz
- R. Ruiz
- Mª Dolores Báez Bernal (coord.)
- Laura Campo Ramírez (coord.)
- Sonia Pereira Crespo (coord.)
- María J. Bande Castro (coord.)
- Julio E. López Díaz (coord.)
Publisher: Sociedad Española para el Estudio de los Pastos
ISBN: 978-84-608-7722-6
Year of publication: 2016
Pages: 363-367
Congress: Sociedad Española para el Estudio de los Pastos. Reunión Científica (55. 2016. Lugo-A Coruña)
Type: Conference paper
Abstract
After the publication of FAO report about the environmental impact of livestock, climatic change is one of the challenges that worry society. The estimation of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the carbon footprint of these systems are the first steep to design mitigation strategies and contribute to their sustainability.Permanent pastures have a high capacity for soil regeneration and carbon fixation, which involves a high mitigation capacity of GHG. The objective of the current paper was to estimate the carbon balance of different sheep dairy flocks. Study was carried out about 6 case of study by direct surveys during two consecutive years. Carbon balance was estimated by carbon footprint considering different functional units (production-milk litre and land occupation-ha) and by the carbon fixation.According to the results the intensification reduces carbon footprint of the flocks. Moreover, also the incorporation of regenerative practices reduces carbon footprint, which could be an interesting mitigation alternative to reduce emissions associated with livestock maintaining their productivity. Against this, when functional unit considered is the land occupation, extensive systems based on permanent pastures have lower carbon footprint. Finally, carbon fixation varies between 8-26%, being higher in those extensive flocks, which gives them a basic role for climatic change mitigation.