Francesca Hopkins (UC Riverside)

Abstract

Dairies are the source of nearly half of methane emissions in California. In an effort to reduce global warming, state law specifically requires reductions in methane emissions of 40% below 2013 levels by 2030 from livestock emissions, including dairy manure management (California Senate Bill 1383 of 2016). One strategy that has been emphasized is the use of anaerobic digesters that capture methane emissions from wet manure management systems for use as a biogas, with the investment of nearly $200 million in state funds in digester construction. However, airborne methane imaging surveys in California suggest that there are non-trivial fugitive emissions from anaerobic dairy digesters. Furthermore, it is not clear how California will ensure the success of this policy with current monitoring approaches. I will discuss challenges for understanding methane emissions from dairies, and possible approaches and research needs to verify methane emission reductions.

Bio

Dr. Francesca Hopkins is an Assistant Professor of Climate Change and Sustainability in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. Francesca studies the effects of human activities on the global carbon cycle from an interdisciplinary earth system science perspective, with particular interest in greenhouse gas emissions in urban and agricultural environments. Francesca is passionate about communicating the science of climate change, and co-founded CLEAN education, a nonprofit organization to teach climate science in schools. More recently, she led the Inland Desert chapter of the Fourth California Climate Assessment, released in 2018. Francesca completed undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with majors in Environmental Science and Spanish, followed by a Ph.D. at University of California, Irvine in Earth System Science. She was a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena from 2014-2016.