NEC06452 Agricultural Practices for Greenhouse Gas Regulation in Oil palm (AP-GRO)

油棕榈是潮湿热带地区最有价值的作物之一，主导着全球植物脂肪市场，也提供生物燃料。全球主要生产国是印度尼西亚和马来西亚，通过取代天然林，这两个国家的油棕榈单一种植目前覆盖了超过1150万公顷的土地。这一变化对动植物的生物多样性造成了严重破坏，但也改变了温室气体(温室气体)一氧化二氮、甲烷和二氧化碳的排放，进而影响全球气候。科学家目前正在研究是否可以通过鼓励单一栽培内部和周围的地面植被来改善生物多样性，以最大限度地减少对环境的破坏，并最大限度地增加土壤保护、病虫害防治和生物多样性保护等共同效益。这些做法包括建立本地植被的保护区和缓冲地带，以及管理种植园本身的植被。这些管理实践在提供生态系统服务方面的成功及其对温室气体排放的影响尚不确定，确实需要一个证据基础来指导改善油棕榈树管理的环境可持续性。一个关键的拟议管理战略是促进种植园内更发达、更多样化的林下植被。除了通过创造更复杂的栖息地和森林残留物之间的联系来增加生物多样性外，林下植被还可以通过保持植物-土壤的相互作用来固定地上生物量中的碳。该项目专门测试不同的林下管理做法如何影响油棕榈园的温室气体排放。我们预计，林下植被可能是确定温室气体排放的一个重要方面，因为油棕榈树通常使用氮肥，其中很大一部分可能作为温室气体一氧化二氮流失到大气中，并作为硝酸盐和有机氮化合物淋溶到河流中。大量的林下生物量可以潜在地增加植物的氮素吸收，因此可以有效地减少一氧化二氮的排放和淋溶。我们迫切需要量化与一系列种植园管理战略有关的温室气体排放，以便我们能够提供准确的环境评估并确定最佳农业做法。该项目将与行业合作伙伴合作，并向可持续棕榈油圆桌会议(RSPO)和印度尼西亚可持续棕榈油委员会(ISPO)传播研究结果，以帮助制定行业指南。RSPO认证的种植园的面积正在迅速增长，因此确定最佳农业实践将产生巨大的影响。与管理选择相关的研究的时间范围对于在不久的将来影响决策至关重要；在印度尼西亚，大多数OP种植园建立于20世纪80年代末和90年代初。由于OP种植园的生命周期为25-30年，近一半将被砍伐，以便在不久的将来重新种植。因此，了解补种和恢复方案是至关重要的，这些方案同时允许高生产率以及支持生物多样性和最大限度地减少温室气体排放。拟议的AP-GRO项目将是印度尼西亚“热带农业中的生物多样性和生态系统功能”(BEFTA)项目团队之间的合作，该团队由行业合作伙伴Sinar Mas农业资源技术公司研究所(SMARTRI)以及英国的剑桥大学和NERC生态与水文学中心(CEH)组成。我们将把CEH在温室气体研究方面的长期专业知识与BEFTA已建立的长期实验结合起来，研究油棕榈种植园林下植被多样化对印度尼西亚苏门答腊岛温室气体排放的影响。

Oil palm is one of the most valuable crops in the humid tropics, dominating the global vegetable fat market and also providing biofuel. The major global producers are Indonesia and Malaysia, where oil palm monocultures now cover over 11.5 million hectares of land, by replacing natural forests. This change has had seriously damaging effects on the biodiversity of flora and fauna, but also alters the emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide, which in turn affects the global climate. Scientists are currently investigating whether biodiversity can be improved by encouraging ground vegetation within and around the monocultures so as to minimise environmental damage and maximise co-benefits such as soil protection, pest control and conservation of biodiversity. Such practices include creating reserves and buffer strips of native vegetation and management of vegetation in the plantations themselves. The success of these management practices in delivering ecosystem services and the impact on GHG emissions are uncertain, and there is a real need for an evidence-base to guide improvements in the environmental sustainability of oil palm management.A key proposed management strategy is to promote a more developed, more diverse understory within the plantation. As well as increasing biodiversity by creating a more complex habitat and links between forest remnants, the understory may sequester carbon in above-ground biomass and through maintenance of plant-soil interactions. This project specifically tests how different understory management practices affect GHG emissions in oil palm plantations. We expect that the understory may be one important aspect in determining GHG emissions because oil palms are routinely fertilised with nitrogen, of which a significant proportion can be lost to the atmosphere as the GHG nitrous oxide and leached to the rivers as nitrate and organic nitrogen compounds. A large understory biomass can potentially increase plant nitrogen uptake, so effectively could reduce nitrous oxide emissions and leaching. We urgently need to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions in relation to a range of plantation management strategies so we can provide accurate environmental assessments and identify best agricultural practices. This project will collaborate with industry partners and disseminate findings to the Round Table of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) board to feed in to the development of industry guidelines. The area of RSPO-certified plantations is rapidly growing, so identifying best agricultural practices will have a large impact.The time scale for research relating to management options is critical for influencing decision making in the near-future; in Indonesia, most OP plantations were established in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Due to the 25 - 30 year life cycle of OP plantations, nearly half are due to be clear-cut for replanting in the near-future. Hence, it is vital to understand replanting and restoration options which simultaneously allow for high productivity as well as supporting biodiversity and minimising GHG emissions. The proposed project, AP-GRO, will be a collaboration between the 'The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function in Tropical Agriculture' (BEFTA) project team in Indonesia, consisting of the industry partner Sinar Mas Agro Resources Technology Corporation Research Institute (SMARTRI) and, in the UK, the University of Cambridge and the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH). We will bring together CEH's long standing expertise in greenhouse gas research with the established BEFTA long-term experiment to investigate the impact of diversifying understory vegetation in oil palm plantations on GHG emissions in Sumatra, Indonesia.