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Laboratory for the environmental sustainability of livestock systems

Head: Prof. Andrea Vitali

vitali@unitus.it

The laboratory, which is located in the Nello Lupori farm, is furnished with tools for tracking greenhouse gas emissions and microclimatic conditions from livestock systems and with specific Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software.

The equipment includes:

  • 2 GreenFeeds for monitoring enteric methane emissions in ruminant species.
  • 4 Sniffers for monitoring enteric methane emissions in ruminant species.
  • One Li-COR system to measure soil fluxes of nitrous oxide.
  • 14 data loggers for monitoring temperature and relative humidity
  • 30 data loggers for monitoring animal body temperature
  • SimaPro software

The tools facilitate field research projects intended to enhance livestock farming’s environmental sustainability and to assist with teaching and learning (stages, theses, etc.).

The research activities are focused on measuring the source of emissions, validating the influence of feeding strategies on enteric methane emissions, identifying species-specific emission factors to use in LCA analysis, assessing emissions in real time, and analyzing the effects of grazing management on soil emissions and carbon sink capacity; to monitoring microclimatic conditions, to developing bioclimatic models to evaluate the impact of climate on livestock.