FARMING & THE ENVIRONMENT
Professor Euan Nisbet.
Measuring methane
Jersey is being used as a ‘test bed’ for vital scientific global research into greenhouse gases. Cathy Le Feuvre visited a local farm to find out why the experts had set up measuring equipment in a cow shed
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hen it comes to methane there are few people who know more than Professor Euan Nisbet. As the Foundation Professor of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, he’s one of the world’s leading experts in the field of greenhouse gases, which are known to be main drivers of climate change. For more than 30 years scientists have been researching greenhouse gases and it’s that study that brought Professor Nisbet and a team of experts to Jersey and to Cowley Farm in St Saviour, in November 2021. Cowley is home to farmer Andrew Le Gallais, who’s also the chairman of the Jersey Milk Marketing Board. The JMMB invited Professor Nisbet to the Island to help the local dairy industry understand more about local greenhouse gas emissions - and specifically methane - from Jersey cattle.
‘Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas,’ Professor Nisbet explained. ‘It’s in the air for nine to ten years, and it comes from many different sources. The biggest sources are environments like natural wetlands; then there are fossil fuels, natural gases, coal, and also agricultural sources - and cows in particular.’ ‘With any sort of ruminant, the methane comes out of the front end of the cow. They breathe it out! Cows are like a walking tropical wetland. If you imagine somewhere in the Congo forest where you get a wetland that is about 37 degrees – that’s a cow! All the cow has done is to internalise the wetland … it does a very good job in digesting grasses as a result.’ Measuring methane and other gases is vital to build up a global picture of emissions, which will ultimately help us understand how we might deal with greenhouse gases.
