New Mitigation Lab launched in Nairobi
A new laboratory facility launched under the Climate Change Unit at ICRAF’s headquarters in Nairobi will allow scientists to quantify greenhouse gas emissions from a range of ecosystems – from forests to crop and dairy farming. The Mitigation Lab, recently launched by the World Agroforestry Centre’s Board of Trustees and funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), will help researchers pinpoint emissions hotspots – areas or practices that release substantially greater amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere.
Research Technician Margaret Thiongo demonstrates manual greenhouse gas sampling techniques to ICRAF's Board of Trustees at the official lab launch
The data generated by the lab will help to compare greenhouse gas emissions between landscapes on which agroforestry and other climate-smart agriculture practices have been adopted and those landscapes on which they have not. This will help provide evidence that farmers who adopt improved practices are contributing to climate change mitigation by reducing their carbon footprint while at the same time increasing their production.
The lab boasts two gas chromatographs, both of which have automated samplers that can load and analyze 120 greenhouse gas samples in an eight hour day, greatly increasing the rate and efficiency of analysis.
Read more about the lab’s current work via the Standard Assessment of Mitigation Potential and Livelihoods in Smallholder Systems Project (SAMPLES) and the Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture Programme (MICCA), FAO.