ABSTRACT

Emissions of gases and particulate matter from agricultural operations can impact human and ecological health and can contribute to global atmospheric greenhouse gas accumulation. As farmers respond to increasing demands for food, feed, fiber, and fuel, the potential environmental and health risks increase. Agricultural air quality is an important emerging area of environmental science, which offers significant challenges to many aspects of research, policy and regulatory authorities. Improvements are needed in measurements, modeling, emission controls, and farm operation management, apart from socio-economic aspects of food production. Controlling emissions of gases and particulate matter from agriculture is notoriously difficult as this sector affects the most basic need of humans, i.e. food, and policies combine an inadequately known science covering a very disparate range of activities in a complex industry with social and political overlays. Moreover, agricultural emissions derive from both area and point sources. Given the serious concerns raised regarding the amount and the impacts of agricultural air emissions, ways must be found to make real progress in reducing these environmental impacts. Agricultural emissions produce significant local and regional impacts, such as odor, Particulate Matter (PM) exposure, eutrophication, acidification, and exposure to toxics, and pathogens. Agricultural emissions also contribute to the global problems caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Agricultural emissions are variable in space and time and in how they interact within the various processes and media effected. Most important in the US are ammonia (where agriculture accounts for ~90% of total emissions), reduced sulfur (unquantified), PM2.5 (~16%), PM10 (~18%), methane (29%), nitrous oxide (72%); and odor and emissions of pathogens (both unquantified). Agriculture also consumes fossil fuels for fertilizer production and farm operations, thus emitting carbon dioxide (CO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx) and particulates. Current research priorities include the quantification of point and non-point sources, the biosphere-atmosphere exchange of ammonia, reduced sulfur compounds, volatile organic compounds, greenhouse gases, odor and pathogens, the quantification of landscape processes, and the primary and secondary emissions of PM. Although European policymakers have made progress in controlling these emissions, regulations in the United States and Asia remain inadequate.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Viney Aneja is a Professor in the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University. He obtained his B. Tech. degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 1971. Before joining the faculty of the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences at N. C. State in 1987, he conducted and supervised research at Corporate Research and Development, General Electric Company, New York He was recently appointed to the US Environmental Protection Agency's Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC) Executive Committee, and Chair the BOSC Subcommittee for Air, Climate, and Energy (ACE) research program, 2014-2020. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture appointed him as a member of the U.S. Agricultural Air Quality Task Force, 2001-2008. He was a member of the US Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board Environmental Engineering Committee. The North Carolina Governor, Hon. Mike Easley appointed him Member, NC Governor's Task Force on Hazardous Materials, 2006-2007. He is a Member Representative of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO. Dr. Aneja's industrial and academic research contributions have been extensively recognized. He won the Noryl Division Proprietary Innovation Award from General Electric in 1983, and the General Electric Managerial Award in 1986. In 1998 the Air and Waste Management Association gave him its Frank A. Chambers Award, the Association's highest scientific honor; in 1999 he became a Fellow of the Association; in 2001 he received the Association's Lyman A. Ripperton Award for distinguished achievement as an educator. He is the recipient of the 2007 North Carolina Award in Science, the highest award a civilian can receive from the Governor of North Carolina. In 2010 he received Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. In 2010 he was invited by the U.S. White House Council on Environmental Quality to assist in the BP Gulf Spill. In 2015 he was awarded the Rossby Visiting Fellow at the Stockholm University, Sweden. At North Carolina State University Dr. Aneja has developed one of the nation's leading agricultural air-quality and climate research programs (http://www.meas.ncsu.edu/airquality). He has published over 170 scientific papers, 127 book chapters and conference proceedings scientific papers, 47 technical reports, 5 US patents, and two books on his research.