Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority, is the national body providing integrated research, advisory and training services to the agriculture and food industry and rural communities.
In 2021, the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine funded the National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory (NASCO).
An infrastructure of 28 Eddy Covariance Flux Towers has being placed in particular areas of interest on farms throughout the country. These sites include peatlands, mineral soils, different farming systems and varying climatic regions.
One of these monitoring stations is located on the farm of Cathal and Bronagh O’Rourke in Boston, Co Clare.
Whilst Eddy Covariance might sound a bit of a mouthful, it’s simply the term used to describe a technique that’s employed by scientists to measure how much CO2 moves in and out of our farms at field scale.
While it has only been in recent years that emissions from agriculture have drawn attention from the media, Teagasc was monitoring such activity over two decades ago.
Today we’ll hear from pupils from CBS Primary School in Ennis and James Rambaud, a Soil Carbon Emissions & Sequestration Technologist with Teagasc.
For more on climate change, listen in to Clare FM for our next episode on September 12th and check out https://www.clare.fm/ours-to-protect/.
*Ours to Protect brought to you by Clare FM, the IBI and funded by Coimisiún na Meán, with the Television Licence Fee.
