Environmental assessment of livestock farms : a comparison of different methods to estimate emissions to air

Emissions to air, water, soil resulting from livestock are determined mainly by manure handling. In order to evaluate the environmental impact from livestock farms and to identify possible actions to reduce pollution sources, suitable methods, generally based on models, should be applied. The aim of the work is to compare the air emissions values obtained using different methods in practical farms in order to improve the applicability of the methods and support an objective assessment of a farm. Ammonia (NH3), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), PM10 and PM2.5 are pollutants calculated by the models. For the comparison we used data from eight farms subjected to Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) procedure, collected from the applications and verified visiting the farms in connection with the official routine inspections.