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，那里的油棕单一种植取代了天然林，目前覆盖了1 150万公顷土地。这种变化对植物群和动物群的生物多样性造成了严重的破坏性影响，而且也改变了温室气体（一氧化二氮、甲烷和二氧化碳）的排放，这反过来又影响到全球气候。科学家们目前正在研究是否可以通过鼓励单一作物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，并最大限度地提高土壤保护，虫害控制和生物多样性保护等共同利益。这些做法包括建立本地植被的保护区和缓冲带，以及管理种植园本身的植被。这些管理措施在提供生态系统服务方面的成功以及对温室气体排放的影响尚不确定，因此有真实的需要一个证据基础来指导油棕管理的环境可持续性的改善。除了通过创造更复杂的生境和森林残余物之间的联系来增加生物多样性外，林下植被还可以通过维持植物-土壤的相互作用，将碳固存在地上生物量中。该项目专门测试了不同的林下管理措施如何影响油棕种植园的温室气体排放。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，因为油棕榈通常施氮，其中很大一部分可以作为温室气体一氧化二氮进入大气，并作为硝酸盐和有机氮化合物进入河流。大量林下生物量可以潜在地增加植物对氮的吸收，从而有效地减少氧化亚氮的排放和淋溶。我们迫切需要量化与一系列种植园管理策略相关的温室气体排放，以便我们能够提供准确的环境评估并确定最佳农业实践。该项目将与行业合作伙伴合作，并将研究结果传播给可持续棕榈油圆桌会议（RSPO）和印度尼西亚可持续棕榈油（ISPO）委员会，以促进行业指导方针的制定。RSPO认证的种植园面积正在迅速增长，因此确定最佳农业实践将产生很大的影响。与管理方案相关的研究的时间尺度对于影响近期决策至关重要;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，近一半将在不久的将来被清除用于重新种植。因此，至关重要的是要了解重新种植和恢复的选择，同时允许高生产力，以及支持生物多样性和最大限度地减少温室气体排放。拟议的项目AP-GRO将是印度尼西亚“热带农业生物多样性和生态系统功能”（BEFTA）项目组之间的合作，该项目组由行业合作伙伴Sinar Mas农业资源技术公司研究所（SMARTRI）和英国剑桥大学以及NERC生态和水文中心（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已建立的BEFTA长期实验相结合，以调查印度尼西亚苏门答腊岛油棕种植园林下植被多样化对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.