About

The Topic 

Adapting greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring tools for the alternate wetting-and-drying (AWD) mitigation practice in Vietnam.

About me

Dia dhaoibh!

My name is Annette, a student of MSc CCAFS (Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security) in NUI Galway. Hailing from the beautiful West Cork!

I am a UCC graduate with a BSc (Hons) in Environmental Science; part of a course affectionately know as BEES.
My Bachelors covered modules in ecology, ecotoxicology, environmental economics, atmospheric chemistry, geology, water quality analysis, environmental impact/risk assessment, geographical information systems, and landfill gas.

In my previous dissertation I studied methane outputs of an Irish landfill site and the accuracy of the LandGEM model in projecting methane outputs.

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I always knew I loved the Environmental Science course I chose to do in UCC, taking to it like a duck to water. I never imagined however that GHGs would become a little niche I would dig out for myself. Yet here I am continuing this love affair with methane; but this time around I will not be picking my way through an Irish landfill site!

Coming from an agricultural background, having grown up in a farming family, I have always been keen on the natural world and see the havoc climate change has wreaked on farming in Ireland in recent years.

Using the skills I developed in my Bachelor’s dissertation on gas modelling tools and landfill waste methane, I will now be changing the perspective and look into tools for measuring GHGs in an agricultural context. In Vietnam, paddy rice crops are the main culprit for major agricultural GHG emissions, and of course those emissions are primarily methane.

“Paddy methane sounds like a gas man.”

Quote of the year from my friend (Áine) upon hearing about my thesis