Researchers at Linköping University’s Department of Thematic Studies, Environmental Change, have developed a simple logger for greenhouse gas flows.
Researchers at Linköping University’s Department of Thematic Studies, Environmental Change, have developed a simple logger for greenhouse gas flows. It is built using inexpensive and easily available parts, and provides data on levels of methane, carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity.
“So far, measurement instruments have been so expensive that society’s mapping of greenhouse gas emissions has had to rely on rough models. It’s extremely important that we can make lots of proper measurements locally, so we can test whether measures for reducing emissions actually work. We hope that our simple and cost-efficient logger can contribute to more such measurements”, says David Bastviken, professor at Environmental Change, and author of an article in Biogeosciences.
Lack of low-cost measurement methods
A current limitation when it comes to determining the greenhouse gas fluxes has been the lack of reliable low-cost measurement methods that can be widely available in society. In 2015, David Bastviken and colleagues described and published a logger for carbon dioxide, which is now used for various types of environmental measurements. However for methane, more complicated and expensive measurement equipment has so far been required. In the current article in Biogeosciences, the researchers describe an inexpensive sensor for methane.
Read more at Linköping University
Image: This is professor David Bastviken. (Credit: LiU)
