Agriculture's Role in Greenhouse Gas Mitigation
Keith Paustian
Professor
Colorado State University
Keith Paustian is a Professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and a Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory (NREL) at Colorado State University. He also serves on the Scientific Steering Committee for the US Carbon Cycle Science Program. Professor Paustian co-chaired the Council on Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) taskforce on agriculture, climate change, and greenhouse gases; and served as Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) volume on greenhouse gas inventory methods for agriculture, forestry and other land use.
Professor Paustian’s work includes assessment of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration for the annual US inventory, and development of accounting tools for farmers and ranchers to get credit under the US 1605B voluntary GHG reduction program. He and his colleagues have developed models for estimating GHG inventories in developing countries, models now being applied in 11 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Professor Paustian’s areas of research include assessment of agricultural mitigation strategies, evaluation of environmental impacts of agricultural bioenergy production, soil organic matter dynamics, and agroecosystem ecology. Professor Paustian has written more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. He is currently working to develop effective mitigation strategies and better methods to measure and predict greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture.
John M. Antle
Professor
Montana State University
John M. Antle is a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University. He holds a B.A. in economics and mathematics from Albion College, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining Montana State, he served as assistant and associate professor at the University of California, Davis; and as Gilbert White Fellow at Resources for the Future; senior staff economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers; and member of the National Resource Council's Board on Agriculture. He was President of the American Agricultural Economics Association from 1999-2000. His current research focuses on the sustainability of agricultural systems, greenhouse gas mitigation and impacts of climate change in agriculture, and payments for ecosystem services in agriculture.
John Sheehan
Senior Engineer
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
John Sheehan holds a B.S. and an M.S. degree in chemical and biochemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University, respectively. He has served as an analyst and project manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) since 1991. During his tenure at NREL, Sheehan has led research on the production and use of biodiesel and ethanol. In the past six years, Sheehan has authored groundbreaking life cycle assessments of biodiesel and ethanol technology, including a comprehensive life cycle evaluation of soybean-based biodiesel. His most recent study is an evaluation of the sustainability of use of agricultural residues as a feedstock for fuel ethanol production.
From 2002 to 2005, Mr. Sheehan led strategic planning activities for the Department of Energy’s Biomass Program. In October 2005, he joined the newly formed Strategic Energy Analysis Center at NREL, where he supports the Office of Planning, Budget and Analysis within DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Eldor A. Paul
Professor
Colorado State University
Eldor Paul is currently a Senior Research Scholar at the Natural Recourses Ecology Laboratory and Professor of Soil and Crop Sciences Colorado State University. Previously he held academic positions in Canada, and at the University of California, Berkeley, and Michigan State University.
Professor Paul has written over 260 articles and books, and his research interests include the ecology of soil biota, the role of nutrients such as nitrogen in plant growth, and the dynamics of carbon and nitrogen in sustainable agriculture and global change. His studies on the sequestration of carbon and nitrogen under afforestation and the sensitivity of different soil organic matter fractions to increased temperatures have led to a better understanding of the role of soils in climate change.