A4 Agriculture, climate change, and ecosystem services

To meet the Paris climate goals, negative emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) must be attained in the second half of this century. Livestock and especially cattle production is a major source of agricultural GHG emissions. Recent studies highlight shifting diets as a mitigation strategy, but large-scale global shifts to vegetarian diets are unlikely. Moreover, large tracts of natural and semi-natural pasture can only contribute to human nutrition via livestock, and produce important ecosystem services (ES) as by-products. Against this background, we will study the effects on global GHG emissions and ES of restricting beef and milk production in Germany (the EU) to natural pasture, while accounting, inter alia, for global land-use change.

Possible dissertation topics

• The potential for grassland-based beef and milk production in Germany (the EU)
• Global welfare and GHG effects of a shift to grassland-based beef and milk production in Germany (the EU)
• Valuating the ecosystem services produced by grassland-based beef and milk production in Germany (the EU)

Leading PI:
Stephan von Cramon-Taubadel

Doctoral researchers of the first cohort:
Karen Arcia
Magdalena Pallauf