Calculations of gaseous and particulate emissions from German agriculture 1990-2015: Report on methods and data (RMD) Submission 2017

The report at hand (including a comprehensive annex of data) serves as additional document to the National Inventory Report (NIR) on the German green house gas emissions and the Informative Inventory Report (IIR) on the German emissions of air pollutants (especially ammonia). The report documents the calculation methods used in the German agricultural inventory model GAS-EM as well as input data, emission results and uncertainties of the emission reporting submission 2017 for the years 1990 - 2015. In this context the sector Agriculture comprises the emissions from animal husbandry, the use of agricultural soils and anaerobic digestion of energy crops. As required by the guidelines, emissions from activities preceding agriculture, from the use of energy and from land use change are reported elsewhere in the national inventories. The calculation methods are based in principle on the international guidelines for emission reporting and have been continuingly improved during the past years by the Thünen Institute working group on agricultural emission inventories, partly in cooperation with KTBL. In particular, these improvements concern the calculation of energy requirements, feeding and the N balance of the most important animal categories. In addition, technical measures such as air scrubbing (mitigation of ammonia emissions) and digestion of animal manures (mitigation of emissions of methane and loughing gas) have been taken into account. For the calculation of emissions from anaerobic digestion of animal manures and energy crops (including spreading of the digestate), the aforementioned working group developed, in cooperation with KTBL, a national methodology. [...]