Airborne observations identify major source of US landfill methane emissions
A team has found via testing from airplanes that landfill work faces tend to be responsible for the biggest share of methane emissions in U.S. landfills. Their findings are published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The researchers are from Carbon Mapper, a California nonprofit dedicated to finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Arizona State University and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The primary gas causing climate change is carbon dioxide. This is due mainly to the sheer volume of the gas being pumped into the atmosphere. Methane actually insulates more heat than carbon dioxide but has received less attention due to lower overall emissions. Still, environmentalists have been growing more concerned about the gas as more sources of it have been found in recent years.
In this new effort, the research team focused their efforts on methane emissions from landfills. Landfills tend to...
