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Energy, Environment, and Sustainability
Series Editors: Avinash Kumar Agarwal · Ashok Pandey

Narasinha Shurpali
Avinash Kumar Agarwal
V. K. Srivastava Editors

Greenhouse Gas
Emissions
Challenges, Technologies and Solutions
Energy, Environment, and Sustainability

Series editors
Avinash Kumar Agarwal, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute
of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Ashok Pandey, Distinguished Scientist, CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology
Research, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
This books series publishes cutting edge monographs and professional books
focused on all aspects of energy and environmental sustainability, especially as it
relates to energy concerns. The Series is published in partnership with the
International Society for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. The books in
these series are editor or authored by top researchers and professional across the
globe. The series aims at publishing state-of-the-art research and development in
areas including, but not limited to:
• Renewable Energy
• Alternative Fuels
• Engines and Locomotives
• Combustion and Propulsion
• Fossil Fuels
• Carbon Capture
• Control and Automation for Energy
• Environmental Pollution
• Waste Management
• Transportation Sustainability

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15901

Narasinha Shurpali Avinash Kumar Agarwal
•

V. K. Srivastava
Editors

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Challenges, Technologies and Solutions

123
Editors
Narasinha Shurpali V. K. Srivastava
Department of Environmental Sankalchand Patel University
and Biological Sciences Visnagar, Gujarat, India
University of Eastern Finland
Kuopio, Finland

Avinash Kumar Agarwal

Department of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

ISSN 2522-8366 ISSN 2522-8374 (electronic)

Energy, Environment, and Sustainability
ISBN 978-981-13-3271-5 ISBN 978-981-13-3272-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3272-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018961223

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
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authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or
for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
Preface

Energy demand has been rising remarkably due to increasing population and
urbanization. Global economy and society are significantly dependent on the energy
availability because it touches every facet of human life and its activities.
Transportation and power generation are two major examples. Without the trans-
portation by millions of personalized and mass transport vehicles and availability of
24  7 power, human civilization would not have reached contemporary living
standards.
The International Society for Energy, Environment and Sustainability (ISEES)
was founded at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), India, in
January 2014 with the aim of spreading knowledge/awareness and catalysing
research activities in the fields of energy, environment, sustainability and com-
bustion. The society’s goal is to contribute to the development of clean, affordable
and secure energy resources and a sustainable environment for the society and to
spread knowledge in the above-mentioned areas and create awareness about the
environmental challenges, which the world is facing today. The unique way
adopted by the society was to break the conventional silos of specializations
(engineering, science, environment, agriculture, biotechnology, materials, fuels,
etc.) to tackle the problems related to energy, environment and sustainability in a
holistic manner. This is quite evident by the participation of experts from all fields
to resolve these issues. ISEES is involved in various activities such as conducting
workshops, seminars and conferences in the domains of its interest. The society also
recognizes the outstanding works done by the young scientists and engineers for
their contributions in these fields by conferring them awards under various
categories.
The second international conference on “Sustainable Energy and Environmental
Challenges” (SEEC-2018) was organized under the auspices of ISEES from 31
December 2017 to 3 January 2018 at J N Tata Auditorium, Indian Institute of
Science Bangalore. This conference provided a platform for discussions between
eminent scientists and engineers from various countries including India, USA,
South Korea, Norway, Finland, Malaysia, Austria, Saudi Arabia and Australia. In
this conference, eminent speakers from all over the world presented their views

v
vi Preface

related to different aspects of energy, combustion, emissions and alternative energy

resources for sustainable development and a cleaner environment. The conference
presented five high-voltage plenary talks from globally renowned experts on topical
themes, namely “Is It Really the End of Combustion Engines and Petroleum?” by
Prof. Gautam Kalghatgi, Saudi Aramco; “Energy Sustainability in India:
Challenges and Opportunities” by Prof. Baldev Raj, NIAS Bangalore; “Methanol
Economy: An Option for Sustainable Energy and Environmental Challenges” by
Dr. Vijay Kumar Saraswat, Hon. Member (S&T), NITI Aayog, Government of
India; “Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Brayton Cycle for Power Generation” by Prof.
Pradip Dutta, IISc Bangalore; and “Role of Nuclear Fusion for Environmental
Sustainability of Energy in Future” by Prof. J. S. Rao, Altair Engineering.
The conference included 27 technical sessions on topics related to energy and
environmental sustainability including 5 plenary talks, 40 keynote talks and 18
invited talks from prominent scientists, in addition to 142 contributed talks, and 74
poster presentations by students and researchers. The technical sessions in the
conference included Advances in IC Engines: SI Engines, Solar Energy: Storage,
Fundamentals of Combustion, Environmental Protection and Sustainability,
Environmental Biotechnology, Coal and Biomass Combustion/Gasification, Air
Pollution and Control, Biomass to Fuels/Chemicals: Clean Fuels, Advances in IC
Engines: CI Engines, Solar Energy: Performance, Biomass to Fuels/Chemicals:
Production, Advances in IC Engines: Fuels, Energy Sustainability, Environmental
Biotechnology, Atomization and Sprays, Combustion/Gas Turbines/Fluid
Flow/Sprays, Biomass to Fuels/Chemicals, Advances in IC Engines: New
Concepts, Energy Sustainability, Waste to Wealth, Conventional and Alternate
Fuels, Solar Energy, Wastewater Remediation and Air Pollution. One of the
highlights of the conference was the rapid-fire poster sessions in (i) Energy
Engineering, (ii) Environment and Sustainability and (iii) Biotechnology, where
more than 75 students participated with great enthusiasm and won many prizes in a
fiercely competitive environment. More than 200 participants and speakers attended
this four-day conference, which also hosted Dr. Vijay Kumar Saraswat, Hon.
Member (S&T), NITI Aayog, Government of India, as the chief guest for the book
release ceremony, where 16 ISEES books published by Springer under a special
dedicated series “Energy, Environment, and Sustainability” were released. This is
the first time that such significant and high-quality outcome has been achieved by
any society in India. The conference concluded with a panel discussion on
“Challenges, Opportunities & Directions for Future Transportation Systems”,
where the panellists were Prof. Gautam Kalghatgi, Saudi Aramco; Dr. Ravi
Prashanth, Caterpillar Inc.; Dr. Shankar Venugopal, Mahindra and Mahindra; Dr.
Bharat Bhargava, DG, ONGC Energy Centre; and Dr. Umamaheshwar, GE
Transportation, Bangalore. The panel discussion was moderated by Prof. Ashok
Pandey, Chairman, ISEES. This conference laid out the road map for technology
development, opportunities and challenges in energy, environment and sustain-
ability domains. All these topics are very relevant for the country and the world in
the present context. We acknowledge the support received from various funding
agencies and organizations for the successful conduct of the second ISEES
Preface vii

conference SEEC-2018, where these books germinated. We would therefore like to

acknowledge SERB, Government of India (special thanks to Dr. Rajeev Sharma,
Secretary); ONGC Energy Centre (special thanks to Dr. Bharat Bhargava); TAFE
(special thanks to Sh. Anadrao Patil); Caterpillar (special thanks to Dr Ravi
Prashanth); Progress Rail, TSI, India (special thanks to Dr. Deepak Sharma);
Tesscorn, India (special thanks to Sh. Satyanarayana); GAIL, Volvo; and our
publishing partner Springer (special thanks to Swati Meherishi).
The editors would like to express their sincere gratitude to a large number of
authors from all over the world for submitting their high-quality work in a timely
manner and revising it appropriately at short notice. We would like to express our
special thanks to Drs. Matthew Bell, Mokhele Moelisti, Eleanora Nistor, Kofi
Boateng, Beibei Yan and Rafael Eufrasio, who reviewed various chapters of this
book and provided very valuable suggestions to the authors to improve their
manuscript.
Climate change is a global threat. The impacts of a changing climate are evident
in the form of extreme climate, increased droughts and floods, sea level rise and
permafrost thawing in the Arctic with an overall impact on the global radiation
balance and surface temperature. Our dependence on fossil fuels, deforestation and
land use are the major anthropogenic causes that have lead to the changes in our
atmospheric composition. Greenhouse gases (GHGs), essential for maintaining an
average global temperature, have seen a rise in their concentrations in the atmo-
sphere, owing to the human perturbation of the climate system. To curb the
unprecedented rise in atmospheric GHGs, the global community is striving to
account for the various sources and sinks of GHGs, so that high emitters can be
identified, opportunities to mitigate climate change can be formulated, and adap-
tation majors can be sorted out. In this context, this book serves to present case
studies on GHG emission scenarios from different parts of the world.

Kuopio, Finland Narasinha Shurpali

Kanpur, India Avinash Kumar Agarwal
Visnagar, India V. K. Srivastava
Contents

1 Introduction to Greenhouse Gas Emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Narasinha Shurpali, A. K. Agarwal and V. K. Srivastava
2 Greenhouse Gas Fluxes of Agricultural Soils in Finland . . . . . . . . . 7
Kristiina Regina, Jaakko Heikkinen and Marja Maljanen
3 Greenhouse Gas Exchange from Agriculture in Italy . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Anna Dalla Marta and Leonardo Verdi
4 GHG Emissions and Mitigation in Romanian Vineyards . . . . . . . . 33
Eleonora Nistor, Alina Georgeta Dobrei, Alin Dobrei
and Narasinha Shurpali
5 Agricultural Cropping Systems in South Africa
and Their Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Mphethe Tongwane, Sewela Malaka and Mokhele Moeletsi
6 Agricultural Greenhouse Gases from Sub-Saharan Africa . . . . . . . 73
Kofi K. Boateng, George Y. Obeng and Ebenezer Mensah
7 The UK Path and the Role of NETs to Achieve
Decarbonisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Rafael M. Eufrasio-Espinosa and S. C. Lenny Koh
8 Measuring Enteric Methane Emissions from Individual
Ruminant Animals in Their Natural Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Matt J. Bell
9 Crop Residue Burning: Effects on Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Ritu Mathur and V. K. Srivastava

ix
x Contents

10 Rooftop Solar Power Generation: An Opportunity to Reduce

Greenhouse Gas Emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Neeru Bansal, V. K. Srivastava and Juzer Kheraluwala
11 Renewable Energy in India: Policies to Reduce Greenhouse
Gas Emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Neeru Bansal, V. K. Srivastava and Juzer Kheraluwala
Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Narasinha Shurpali is a senior researcher in the

Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences,
University of Eastern Finland (UEF), Kuopio Campus.
He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the College of
Agriculture, Mahatma Phule Agricultural University
(India) and University of Nebraska (USA), respectively,
and subsequently worked at various international insti-
tutes including the University of Antwerp (Belgium),
Indian Council of Agricultural Research (India),
University of Indiana (USA) and the Finnish Forest
Research Institute (Finland). His primary research
interest is in using measurement techniques to under-
stand the carbon and nitrogen biogeochemical cycles in
agriculture and other complex ecosystems such as
natural and managed peatlands, forests on organic and
mineral soils, arctic ecosystems, and simulation mod-
elling of biogeochemical cycles of C and N using field
data to validate the models, which represent an impor-
tant tool in enhancing our understanding of the atmo-
sphere–biosphere exchange.

xi
xii Editors and Contributors

Avinash Kumar Agarwal is a professor in the

Department of Mechanical Engineering at Indian
Institute of Technology Kanpur. His areas of interest
are IC engines, combustion, alternative fuels, conven-
tional fuels, optical diagnostics, laser ignition, HCCI,
emission and particulate control, and large bore
engines. He has published 24 books and more than
230 international journal and conference papers. He is a
fellow of SAE (2012), ASME (2013), ISEES (2015)
and INAE (2015). He has received several awards such
as the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in
engineering sciences (2016), Rajib Goyal Prize (2015)
and NASI-Reliance Industries Platinum Jubilee Award
(2012).

V. K. Srivastava is Provost (Vice Chancellor) at

Sankalchand Patel University, Visnagar, Gujarat (India).
His area of research interest includes waste water
treatment, solid waste management, Environmental issues
of industries and energy recovery by using plasma
technology. He is peer reviewer of large number of
research papers being published in reputed high indexed
National and International Journals in above mentioned
research areas. He has published and presented more than
50 research papers in National and International Journals
and Conferences and also number of books and chapters
with National and International publishers. He has worked
on many government- and industry-sponsored projects
and is a member of many technical and professional
societies including the European Geosciences Union,
Society of Environment Toxicology and Chemistry,
American Chemical Society and Royal Society of
Chemistry.

Contributors

A. K. Agarwal Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of

Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Neeru Bansal CEPT University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
Matt J. Bell University of Nottingham, Leicestershire, UK
Editors and Contributors xiii

Kofi K. Boateng Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering,

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, UPO, KNUST, Kumasi,
Ghana
Alin Dobrei Banat University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine
“King Michael I of Romania”, Timișoara, Romania
Alina Georgeta Dobrei Banat University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary
Medicine “King Michael I of Romania”, Timișoara, Romania
Rafael M. Eufrasio-Espinosa Advanced Resource Efficiency Centre (AREC),
The University of Sheffield, Management School, Sheffield, UK
Jaakko Heikkinen Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Jokioinen, Finland
Juzer Kheraluwala Ernst & Young LLP, New Delhi, India
S. C. Lenny Koh Advanced Resource Efficiency Centre (AREC), The University
of Sheffield, Management School, Sheffield, UK
Sewela Malaka Agricultural Research Council – Institute for Soil, Climate and
Water, Pretoria, South Africa
Marja Maljanen Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences,
University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
Anna Dalla Marta Department of Agrifood Productions and Environmental
Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Ritu Mathur Government R.R. Autonomous College, Alwar, Rajasthan, India
Ebenezer Mensah Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, UPO, KNUST, Kumasi,
Ghana
Mokhele Moeletsi Agricultural Research Council – Institute for Soil, Climate and
Water, Pretoria, South Africa; Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Centre,
University of Limpopo, Sovenga, South Africa
Eleonora Nistor Banat University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary
Medicine “King Michael I of Romania”, Timișoara, Romania
George Y. Obeng Technology Consultancy Center and Mechanical Engineering
Department, College of Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology, UPO, KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana
Kristiina Regina Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Jokioinen, Finland
Narasinha Shurpali Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences,
Kuopio, Finland
xiv Editors and Contributors

V. K. Srivastava Sankalchand Patel University, Visnagar, Gujarat, India

Mphethe Tongwane Agricultural Research Council – Institute for Soil, Climate
and Water, Pretoria, South Africa
Leonardo Verdi Department of Agrifood Productions and Environmental
Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Chapter 1
Introduction to Greenhouse Gas
Emissions

Narasinha Shurpali, A. K. Agarwal and V. K. Srivastava

Abstract Climate change is a global threat. The increasing concentrations of

greenhouse gases (GHGs—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) in the
atmosphere are blamed for the changing global climate. The greenhouse gases play
a key role in causing climate change, and the biosphere can contribute positively as
well as negatively to the atmospheric GHG concentrations through feedback pro-
cesses. Knowledge of the feedback processes and their interactions with climate
change and human activities is necessary if we are to understand to what impact
feedback processes will have on climate change and to what extent manipulation of
the biosphere will actually have the desired beneficial effects. In this context, a
significant amount of scientific research work has been done and is continuing
across different parts of the world to characterize the sources and sinks of GHGs.
Thus, the book entitled, ‘Greenhouse Gas Emissions,’ is a compilation of select
case studies on the topic authored by international scientists from different parts of
the world.

Keywords Climate change Agriculture Decarbonisation
Ruminants



Crop residue burning Solar power Mitigation

N. Shurpali (&)
Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Yliopistoranta 1 DE,
PO Box 1627, 70211 Kuopio, Finland
e-mail: narasinha.shurpali@uef.fi
A. K. Agarwal
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur,
Kanpur 208016, Uttar Pradesh, India
e-mail: akag@iitk.ac.in
V. K. Srivastava
Sankalchand Patel University, Visnagar, Gujarat, India
e-mail: drvks9@gmail.com

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 1

N. Shurpali et al. (eds.), Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Energy, Environment,
and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3272-2_1
2 N. Shurpali et al.

The atmosphere forms a major part of our environment. The life on Earth
dynamically responds to this environment. The atmosphere interacts with the bio-
sphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and lithosphere on timescales from seconds to
millennia (Jerez et al. 2018) and on spatial scales from molecules to the global
level. Changes in one component are directly or indirectly communicated to the
other components through complex processes and feedbacks. Human and societal
actions, such as energy and land use and various natural feedback mechanisms
involving the biosphere and atmosphere, have major impacts on the complex
interplay between radiatively important trace gases in the atmosphere and climate
(Dai 2016). The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has increased by 43%
since 1750 (Ciais et al. 2013). The atmospheric CO2 concentration as measured at
the Mauna Loa laboratory during June 2018 was 411 ppm (as opposed to about
280 ppm during the preindustrial times). The growth rate of atmospheric CO2
during the 1960–69 decade was 0.85 ppm year−1, while it climbed to 2.28 ppm
year−1 during the recent 10-year (2008–17) period. The reason for such a drastic
change in the atmospheric composition is attributed to our overdependence on fossil
fuels for energy and deforestation. Corresponding to this rise in CO2 content, the
mean global surface temperature has already increased by 0.85 °C, compared to the
preindustrial era (Hansen et al. 2010). Additionally, global methane concentrations
have increased from 722 parts per billion (ppb) in preindustrial times to 1834 ppb
by 2013, an increase by a factor of 2.5 and the highest value in at least
800,000 years. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is among the most important greenhouse gases
(GHGs) as its one molecule has about 300 times greater warming potential than that
of CO2 over a 100-year time horizon (Myhre et al. 2013). It is produced both in
natural and managed soils, agricultural soils being the largest anthropogenic source.
Changes in the atmospheric composition of these GHGs are causes for a changing
climate across the globe. The impacts of climate change are becoming evident
across all continents in the warmer oceans, reduced snow and ice cover and rising
sea levels. With this in view, we have made an attempt in this book to gather
information on GHG dynamics in different parts of the world and present a few case
studies on the possibilities for mitigation of climate change.
Agriculture in northern European regions, such as Finland, is limited by the short
growing seasons and low cumulative degree days during the growing period.
Climate change is projected to lengthen the growing seasons and increase the
growing degree days. Crop yields are projected to increase in Northern Europe,
although the projections allow for both positive and negative impact on crop yields.
Finland is a northern country with cool and temperate climate. This has implications
for the greenhouse gas balance of cultivated soils. Utilizing organic soils for food
production is unavoidable in Finland owing to its high coverage of peat soils. The
greenhouse gas emissions per hectare are several folds on organic soils than on
mineral soils. Thus, despite their proportion being only ten percent of the total
cultivated area in Finland, the organic soils are a dominant source of agricultural
carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions at the national level. Chapter 2 provides
1 Introduction to Greenhouse Gas Emissions 3

an account of the emissions from organic agricultural soils in Finland as relevant to

the land use and climate change policies in Finland.
In Italy, in addition to industry, transport, and energy sectors, agriculture is one of
the main sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions. Intensive
and extensive cultivation practices such as fertilization and fuel consumption for
tractors are the more impactful factors in terms of global GHGs. Italy does not
represent an exception to the rule, and owing to its high variability in its environ-
mental and geomorphological conditions, a wide range of agricultural systems are
adopted in the country with varying GHGs emission potentials. CO2 emissions are
primarily produced from mechanized agriculture in the country. Northern Italy
is known for its paddy cultivation, which is the main source of CH4 emissions that
are produced in flooded fields from anaerobic microorganisms. Crop and animal
husbandry are practiced in tandem, and thus, methane emissions from farm animals
are also an important GHG source in the country. In addition, the intensive use of
fertilizers contributes to N-based emissions following nitrification/denitrification
and N-volatilization processes into the soil. Chapter 3 gives an account of how the
Italian agriculture plays a key role in GHGs emissions.
Romania is a major European wine country with rich historic and cultural tra-
ditions, many of them directly related to wine. The national policies are geared
towards making this country a producer of high-quality wine and thus a valued
member of the world wine community. The total area under viticulture in Romania
represents about 2% of the total arable land area. Viticulture accounts for about 7%
of the total agricultural production and wine ranks third among the exported
agri-food products. While there are not many studies reporting GHG emissions
from grape cultivation in Romania, Chap. 4 provides the perspective on Romanian
viticulture.
Agriculture in the sub-Saharan African sub-continent, although still rudimentary
in terms of management practices and production efficiency, provides the mainstay
for majority of its people. Chapter 5 takes a look at the sub-Saharan African
agriculture, its contribution to the emission of Greenhouse gases, and their path-
ways. It aims to address the effects of a changing climate on SSA agricultural
productivity. The contribution of SSA agriculture to the socioeconomic well-being
of its people is also discussed. Adaptation and resilience building among the
dominating smallholder farmers in the region are captured as well as the factors that
hinder the effective scaling up of strategies aimed at ameliorating the effects of
climate variability on local agriculture. Finally, policy interventions geared toward
the significant reduction of climate change effects on SSA are discussed.
South Africa is a major emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) and accounts for
65% and 7% of Africa’s total emissions and agricultural emissions, respectively.
South Africa has a dual agricultural economy, comprising a well-developed com-
mercial sector and subsistence-oriented farming in the rural areas. The country has
an intensive management system of agricultural lands. Agriculture, Forestry and
Land Use are the second largest emitter in the country. Chapter 6 presents char-
acteristics of GHG emissions from crop management in South Africa with a
national perspective sustainable mitigation options.
4 N. Shurpali et al.

In 2017, the UK powered itself for a full day without coal for the first time since
the Industrial Revolution. In addition, in the beginning of this year, it laid out a
strategy to phase out all coal-fired power plants by 2025. This has been made
possible by an upsurge in the use of renewable energy in the country. Such efforts
to combat climate change show a significant decrease in CO2 emissions during the
last 5 years. Adoption of positive national climate change strategies has lead UK on
a steady transition toward a low-carbon economy. Chapter 7 reviews the current
state of the greenhouse gas emissions in the UK and describes what measures UK
has adopted to take the nation on the path of a low-carbon economy.
While the above chapters provide country-specific GHG emission scenarios, this
book also provides insights into other issues that are relevant to national GHG
accounting. Some such case studies include methane emissions from cattle and
emissions from crop residue burning. Humans depend on livestock as they are an
important source of meat, milk, fiber, and labor. Energy is lost in the form of
methane gas when the ruminants digest plant material through rumen fermentation.
Ruminant livestock is a significant source of atmospheric methane, with an esti-
mated 17% of global enteric methane emissions from livestock. Methane is a potent
GHG with about 25 times higher warming potential than CO2. The chapter on
measuring methane emissions from ruminants (Chap. 8) provides a review on the
measurement techniques and discusses their advantages and limitations with a
perspective on accurate accounting of these emissions from this important source.
India is one of the key global producers of food grain, oilseed, sugarcane, and
other agricultural products. Agriculture generates huge amounts of crop residues.
With an expected increase in food production in the future, crop residue generation
will also increase. These leftover residues exhibit not only resource loss but also a
missed opportunity to improve a farmer’s income. Currently, the farmers in India
resort to residue burning, a practice that is perceived to enhance soil carbon
sequestration. While such a practice is being followed since a long time, its impact
on the environment is not well understood (Chap. 9). There is a need for extensive
research with large-scale GHG measurements from crop residue burning in India.
At the Paris COP21 climate summit held at the end of 2015, a Breakthrough
Energy Coalition and Mission Innovation plans were formulated by the partici-
pating countries. These are strategies aimed at reducing global GHGs, the use of
clean energy and limiting the global surface temperature increase to 2 °C or less by
2050. With abundant solar energy available in India, attempts are in full swing to
harness this renewable source of energy in the country. The chapter on rooftop solar
power generation (Chap. 10) exemplifies these attempts with a case study from a
metropolitan city in western India, while the chapter on renewable energy sources
in India (Chap. 11) focusses on policies of the central and state governments in
India to promote renewable energy, especially solar energy, to reduce national
GHG emissions.
1 Introduction to Greenhouse Gas Emissions 5

References

Ciais P et al (2013) Climate change 2013: the physical science basis. Contribution of working
group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change.
Cambridge University Press
Dai A (2016) Future warming patterns linked to today’s climate variability. Sci Rep 6, Article
number: 19110
Hansen J, Ruedy R, Sato M, Lo K (2010) Global surface temperature change. Rev Geophys 48,
Article number: RG4004
Jerez S, López-Romero JM, Turco M, Jiménez-Guerrero P, Vautard R, Montávez JP (2018)
Impact of evolving greenhouse gas forcing on the warming signal in regional climate model
experiments. Nat Commun 9, Article number: 1304
Myhre G, Shindell D, Bréon F-M, Collins W, Fuglestvedt J, Huang J, Koch D, Lamarque J-F,
Lee D, Mendoza B, Nakajima T, Robock A, Stephens G, Takemura T, Zhang H (2013)
Anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing. In: Stocker TF, Qin D, Plattner G-K, Tignor M,
Allen SK, Boschung J, Nauels A, Xia Y, Bex V, Midgley PM (eds) Climate change 2013: the
physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the
intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United
Kingdom and New York, NY, USA
Chapter 2
Greenhouse Gas Fluxes of Agricultural
Soils in Finland

Kristiina Regina, Jaakko Heikkinen and Marja Maljanen

Abstract Finland is a northern country with cool and humid climate. This has
implications for the greenhouse gas balance of cultivated soils. Utilizing organic
soils for food production is unavoidable in a country with high coverage of peat
soils. As the greenhouse gas emissions per hectare are several folds on organic soils
compared to mineral soils, organic soils are a dominant source of agriculture-related
carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions in country scale although their pro-
portion is only 10% of the field area. Another factor that exposes fields to high
losses of nutrients and organic matter is the short growing season and the resulting
long non-vegetated period. The review of existing data shows that emissions of
carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are the most important components of the total
greenhouse gas balance, whereas fluxes of methane are negligible in drained cul-
tivated soils. Generally, the total emissions are higher from annual than perennial
cropping. Climate and agricultural policies have tightening requirements for all
economic sectors, and this imposes new challenges to agricultural management. As
soils are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture, special attention
should be paid on developing mitigation measures and practices that reduce the
climatic impact of cultivated soils.

K. Regina (&)
J. Heikkinen

Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Tietotie 4, 31600 Jokioinen, Finland
e-mail: kristiina.regina@luke.fi
J. Heikkinen
e-mail: jaakko.heikkinen@luke.fi
M. Maljanen
Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland,
Yliopistonranta 1, 70210 Kuopio, Finland
e-mail: marja.maljanen@uef.fi

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 7

N. Shurpali et al. (eds.), Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Energy, Environment,
and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3272-2_2
8 K. Regina et al.

2.1 Agriculture, Climate and Soil Types in Finland

Finland is located in northern Europe between the northern latitudes 60°–

70° and eastern longitudes 20°–30°. It has the northernmost agricultural regions of
the European Union. Forest is the dominant land use, and 8% of the land area of the
country is used as croplands. Agriculture is concentrated in the southern and
western regions of the country (Fig. 2.1). Annual cropping is restricted to the
southern parts of the country, whereas the northern regions with short growing
season suit best for grasslands and milk production.
Half of the agricultural area is used for cereal cropping and about 30% for grass
production (Luke 2016). Grass is mainly cultivated in crop rotations, and perma-
nent grasslands are not common; most grasslands are renewed every 3–4 years due
to damages in the sward during the winter.
The conventional and most common management of cropland includes autumn
tillage, crop residue retention and the use of mineral fertilizer and pesticides.
Manure is typically used as fertilizer on the same farm where it is produced. Liming
is needed under Finnish conditions to render the naturally acid soils to suitable for
agricultural production. Drainage is essential for maintaining proper cultivation
conditions; 60–70% of the croplands currently are equipped with a subsurface
drainage system, and the rest has open ditches.
The climate is humid boreal with mean temperature ranging from −2 to 5 °C
and annual precipitation from 450 to 750 mm depending on the region. Length of
the growing season varies from 105 to 185 days in the different regions of the
country, and the effective temperature sums from 600 to 1400 °C.
Due to the northern and humid conditions of Finland, peatlands are characteristic
for the landscape. Originally half of the area of Finland has been peat soil. Half of
that is not in a pristine state but has been drained for different uses, mainly forestry.
A smaller fraction of the peat soils is utilized as croplands, and currently about 10%
of the cultivated area is under peat or other organic soils (Table 2.1). The rest is
different mineral soils with clay soils dominating in the south and coarse soils in the
north.

2.2 Agriculture as a Source of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Greenhouse gases relevant for agriculture are methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2)
and nitrous oxide (N2O) with the two latter constituting most of the emissions from
soils. In agriculture, these gases are mainly released from processes where organic
matter decomposes or mineral inputs are used as substrates in microbial processes
as part of nutrient cycles. Sources of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture are
soils, enteric fermentation of production animals and manure storages. Nutrient
cycles are faster in agricultural soils compared to native soils, and this imposes
2 Greenhouse Gas Fluxes of Agricultural Soils in Finland 9

Fig. 2.1 Croplands in Finland

10 K. Regina et al.

Table 2.1 Soil and % of cropland area

cultivation types of cropland
in Finland Soil type
Clay 40.8
Fine 20.6
Coarse 27.6
Organic 11.0
Cropping sequences
Annual cropland 38.5
Perennial cropland 12.5
Crop rotation 49.0
Reference: Heikkinen et al. (2013)

challenges for managing the production systems in a way that minimizes losses and
the environmental impact of agricultural production.
Greenhouse gas emissions are reported annually under the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the reports are publicly available
(UNFCCC 2018). Total greenhouse gas emissions of Finland varied between 55
and 81 Mt CO2 eq. in 2006–2016, but only part of agricultural soil emissions
is included in this figure, namely nitrous oxide emissions from fertilization, crop
residues and decomposition of peat in organic soils. These emissions are reported
under sector “Agriculture”. Carbon stock changes from mineral soils, and emis-
sions of CO2 from organic soils are reported in the sector “land use, land-use
change and forestry” (LULUCF) which is not part of the share referred to as total
emissions. Methane fluxes from soils are not reported as they are of minor sig-
nificance and not a mandatory category. All agricultural emissions (with LULUCF
included) have been 20–25% of the total annual emissions of Finland. Soils are the
highest single source of emissions in agriculture, which is mainly related to the high
proportion of cultivated organic soils in Finland.
The total area of croplands has been extremely stable for the latest decades.
However, due to the development towards larger farm size, there has been reallo-
cation of production from mineral to organic soils as the farms quitting production
are located in the southern regions, and the enlarging farms are in the peat-rich
regions of western and northern Finland. The proportion of organic soils has
increased from 8 to 11% in 1990–2016. This is the main reason for clear increase in
greenhouse gas emissions from croplands during the same period.
Climate policies have increasing requirements for different economic sectors,
and agricultural policies will need to reflect on those better than before. Agricultural
emission sources are small and scattered, and the emissions typically feature high
uncertainties due to the biological nature of the processes. A large database of
emission measurements is needed to enable the design of effective mitigation
measures and verification of mitigation effects. This chapter reviews the available
data and underlines the development needs.
2 Greenhouse Gas Fluxes of Agricultural Soils in Finland 11

2.3 Greenhouse Gas Fluxes from Agricultural Soils

2.3.1 Mineral Soils

2.3.1.1 Carbon Dioxide

The balance between carbon input and decomposition of organic matter determines
if a field is a source or a sink of carbon. There is only one study that reports net
ecosystem exchange of a field on mineral soil (Lind et al. 2016) and that represents
cultivation of reed canary grass which is not an especially common crop. Thus, the
available data does not allow for estimation of a full carbon balance of a typical
field based on measurements (Table 2.2). Evidence from a 35-year field monitoring
points to the direction that cultivated mineral soils on the average lose carbon at an
annual rate about 200 kg/ha (Heikkinen et al. 2013). The estimate was based on
monitoring of about 500 fields and soil sampling only to 15 cm; thus, it represents
changes in the topsoil only. The authors deduced that the declining trend is related
to warming climate, changes in cropping (less annual crops and varieties with less
crop residues) and the young age of fields that may be still losing carbon from the
phase of the preceding land use (forest).
The amount of carbon input depends on choices made in cultivation practices.
Decomposition is mainly driven by the climatic conditions although, e.g. tillage
practices have a role in that as well. Despite the cool climate restricting decom-
position of organic matter, it is likely that conventional agricultural practices result
in loss of carbon from soil in Finnish conditions. A long-term field experiment in
the neighbouring country, Sweden, showed that returning only crop residues with

Table 2.2 Annual greenhouse gas fluxes of cultivated mineral soils

Mean (g m2 year−1) Min Max n Refs.
Annual crop
Net CO2 exchange – – –
C loss as yield (CO2) – – –
CH4 flux −0.04 ± 0.07 −0.12 0.06 7 1; 2
N2O flux 0.57 ± 0.23 0.20 1.02 31 1; 3; 4; 5
Perennial crop
Net CO2 exchangea −950 −961 −939 2 6
C loss as yield (CO2) 1183 1228 1137 2 6
CH4 flux −0.05 ± 0.03 −0.09 0.03 14 1; 2; 10
N2O flux 0.43 ± 0.31 0.06 1.13 20 1; 3; 4; 7; 8; 9
n = number of annual flux estimates
a
Negative value = carbon sequestration, positive value = carbon loss
References: 1 (Syvasalo et al. 2006); 2 (Regina et al. 2007); 3 (Syvasalo et al. 2004); 4 (Petersen
et al. 2006); 5 (Sheehy et al. 2013); 6 (Lind et al. 2016); 7 (Regina et al. 2006); 8 (Maljanen et al.
2009); 9 (Virkajarvi et al. 2010); 10 (Maljanen et al. 2012b)
12 K. Regina et al.

no other amendments usually results in the decline of the carbon stock (Katterer
et al. 2011). Plant breeding tends to develop varieties with less and less crop
residues, which may also complicate maintaining the carbon content of cultivated
soils. However, the amount of above-ground plant litter does not seem to be crucial
for maintaining the carbon stocks of cultivated soils as the removal or burning of
straw did not have an effect in a 30-year field experiment in Southern Finland
(Singh et al. 2015).
Converting native ecosystems to agricultural use typically reduces the carbon
stock by 20–40%, and the loss of carbon from the soil profile is fastest during the
first decades (Guo and Gifford 2002; Karhu et al. 2011). Reaching a new steady
state where the carbon input and its loss are in balance may take several decades,
and thus it is impossible to say how much of the observed carbon loss is due to the
land use change and how much is caused by agricultural management.

2.3.1.2 Methane

Methane is produced microbially in anaerobic conditions and consumed in aerobic

conditions. In soils, the conditions can vary from anaerobic to aerobic in time or
space. The sites of CH4 production are the lower soil layers with low oxygen content
or soil aggregates favouring anaerobic bacteria. Sites of CH4 consumption are the
topsoil or macropores of the soil. Soil micro- or macroporosity was found to affect
the observed rates of CH4 flux in Finnish clay and sandy soils (Regina et al. 2007). In
cultivated soils, the annual balance of CH4 is usually close to zero most often
resulting in more CH4 being consumed than produced. Emissions of CH4 have
been reported to occur occasionally in wet conditions (Regina et al. 2007), but
even then, the annual balance typically indicates net consumption of CH4.
Compared to CO2, the carbon flows related to CH4 are minor (Table 2.2). The
annual fluxes have ranged from −0.12 to 0.06 g m−2 with no clear differences
between annual and perennial cropping can be seen. Grazing has been found to
change pastures from sink to source of CH4 emissions due to CH4 released from the
deposited dung (Maljanen et al. 2012b).

2.3.1.3 Nitrous Oxide

In cultivated mineral soils, the most significant gas in the total greenhouse gas
budget is N2O. Average annual emissions of N2O have been 0.6 g m−2 for annual
crops and 0.4 g m−2 for perennial crops including mostly grass leys
(Table 2.2). Annual emissions of N2O are typically slightly higher from annual
cultivation compared to perennial despite the higher fertilization rates on perennial
ley production (Regina et al. 2013).
Perennial crops take up nutrients clearly for a longer period annually compared
to annual crops and that reduces the amount of nitrogen available for the microbes
during the non-vegetated period. The emissions during the period between harvest
2 Greenhouse Gas Fluxes of Agricultural Soils in Finland 13

and sowing represent about 40% of the annual budget of N2O (Regina et al. 2013)
which highlights the importance of the residual nitrogen after harvest in the absence
of nutrient uptake of plants. The difference between perennial and annual crops may
thus be emphasized in the northern conditions with short growing season of cash
crops.
It has been found in many studies that emissions of N2O are not ceased in the
winter time even when the soil is frozen. Availability of nitrate is always good in
cultivated soils, and the low oxygen content favours denitrifying bacteria that can
be active in microsites with unfrozen water of frozen soil (Teepe et al. 2004). One
reason for the high N2O production at low temperatures can be that N2O reductase
enzymatic activity is inhibited (Muller et al. 2003), and therefore the end product of
denitrification is N2O instead of N2.
The timing of freezing and soil water content have important effects on the
emission of N2O (Maljanen et al. 2009; Teepe et al. 2004). Also the depth and
timing of snow cover can affect N2O emissions. Snow manipulation experiments
have shown that thinner snow cover can lower soil temperatures and increase the
extent and duration of soil frost (Maljanen et al. 2009). In frozen soil, N2O is still
produced and accumulated in soil, and it is then rapidly released during thawing
(Koponen and Martikainen 2004; Maljanen et al. 2007a, 2009). The N2O pro-
duction in frozen soil does not correlate well with the N2O emitted from soil as a
result of the low gas diffusion rate. Therefore, the release of N2O during winter does
not give the correct estimate of N2O production activity during the winter.
Fertilization rate, especially the amount of mineral nitrogen, has been found
to affect the annual emissions when studied in subsets of annual and perennial
cropping (Regina et al. 2013). The available data does not allow reliable estimates
of the effects of fertilizer type (mineral/organic) on N2O emissions. Recent evi-
dence shows that external nitrogen inputs induce also emissions of nitric oxide
(NO) and gaseous nitrous acid (HONO) that are not greenhouse gases but reactive
in the atmosphere (Bhattarai et al. 2018; Maljanen et al. 2007b).
There is some evidence that no-till management increases N2O emissions from
cultivated soils (Sheehy et al. 2013). The increase is related to the more dense
structure of the soil and thus higher soil moisture favouring denitrification.
A probable but poorly known hotspot of N2O emissions are fields on acid
sulphate soils. They are located on the former sea bottom of the coastal regions and
have large amounts of organic matter in the subsoil due to sedimented materials.
The field area on acid sulphate soils is in the range of 43 000–130 000 ha
(Yli-Halla et al. 1999). They are characterized by a large stock of nitrogen and high
microbial activity that may induce extremely high emissions of N2O, even of the
magnitude of tens of kilograms per hectare when drained for agriculture (Simek
et al. 2011, 2014; Petersen et al. 2012; Denmead et al. 2010).
14 K. Regina et al.

2.3.2 Organic Soils

2.3.2.1 Carbon Dioxide

Losses of carbon from organic soils are typically several folds compared to carbon
stock changes in mineral soils. Typically 0.5–2 cm of peat is lost from the topsoil of
cultivated soils due to peat decomposition annually (Gronlund et al. 2008) and that
represents carbon loss of several tonnes per hectare. Although carbon exchange
between the soil and atmosphere forms the majority of the climatic impact of
cultivated organic soils, full carbon balance estimates are still rare. The annual net
ecosystem exchange has varied between −800 and 3000 g m−2 in Finnish studies
(Table 2.3). As the reported values show, even in organic soils photosynthesis may
sometimes exceed carbon loss from the soil, at least in the case of crops with large
biomass. The consideration of the climatic impact must, however, include the
biomass transported from the field, and in most cases, this turns the field to net
source of carbon even if photosynthesis was able to counteract peat decomposition.

Table 2.3 Annual greenhouse gas fluxes of cultivated organic soils

Mean (g m2 Min Max n GWP (t CO2 eq. Refs.
year−1) ha−1 year−1)
Annual crop
Net CO2 2080 ± 1150 770 3040 4 20.8 1, 2, 3
exchange*
C loss as 600 ± 180 460 855 4 6.0 1, 2, 3
yield (CO2)
CH4 flux −0.06 ± 0.24 −0.49 0.51 10 −0.02 3, 4, 5
N2O flux 1.74 ± 0.92 0.84 3.79 11 5.2 3, 6, 7
Total 32.0
Perennial crop
Net CO2 560 ± 1210 −780 2750 8 5.6 1, 2, 3
exchange*
C loss as 920 ± 400 280 1570 8 9.2 1, 2, 3
yield (CO2)
CH4 flux 0.15 ± 0.34 −0.25 0.91 14 0.05 3, 4, 5, 8
N2O flux 1.14 ± 1.47 0.04 5.47 19 3.4 3, 6, 7, 8,
9, 10
Total 18.3
n = number of annual flux estimates
GWP = global warming potential
*Negative value = carbon sequestration, positive value = carbon loss
References: 1 (Maljanen et al. 2001); 2 (Lohila et al. 2004); 3 (Maljanen et al. 2004); 4 (Maljanen
et al. 2003a); 5 (Regina et al. 2007); 6 (Maljanen et al. 2003b); 7 (Regina et al. 2004); 8 (Maljanen
et al. 2009); 9 (Maljanen et al. 2010b); 10 (Shurpali et al. 2009)
2 Greenhouse Gas Fluxes of Agricultural Soils in Finland 15

The existing results suggest lower carbon losses from soils under a perennial
than annual crop. This is related to the less frequent disturbance of the soil as well
as higher carbon input to the soil, especially from high-yielding grass crops.

2.3.2.2 Methane

Similar to mineral soils, fluxes of CH4 are close to zero also in drained organic soils
(Table 2.3). The mean value for annual crops is slightly negative indicating oxi-
dation of CH4 in the topsoil, whereas it seems that net production of CH4 is more
common in the denser and moister soil under perennial crops. Periods of wet soil
conditions have been found to increase the net flux occasionally as reported, e.g. by
Maljanen et al. (2013).
Drainage level and functioning of the drains affect soil moisture status and thus
largely determine the flux rates of CH4. In two fields with similar cultivation
practices, the field with poorly functioning drainage had mainly net emissions
during a 2-year monitoring period, whereas its well-drained counterpart showed net
consumption of CH4 (Regina et al. 2007).
Emissions from open ditches can have a large impact on the total greenhouse
balance of a drained peatland (Schrier-Uijl et al. 2011; Minkkinen and Laine 2006).
There are limited data on these emissions from Finnish croplands (Hyvonen et al.
2013). As it is known that the nutrient status of the drained area greatly affects the
emission rate, it is likely that the open ditches around nutrient-rich cultivated fields
are a high source of CH4 emissions. However, most fields are subsurface drained,
and the significance of these emissions is likely minor in the country scale.

2.3.2.3 Nitrous Oxide

In organic soil, peat decomposition is the main source of N2O emissions and
fertilization has minor importance. Mineralization of nitrogen from the peat can
have the magnitude of several hundreds of kilograms per hectare annually, and this
enables relatively high emission rates of N2O regardless of fertilization (Leppelt
et al. 2014). The annual emissions of N2O have varied between 0.04 and
5.47 g m−2 in Finnish measurements (Table 2.3). The annual emissions are thus
several folds compared to mineral soils.
The average annual emission rates have been higher for annual than perennial
crops indicating tighter nitrogen cycle in the case of perennial grasses that are able
to take up nutrients until late autumn and are tilled less frequently.
Like in mineral soils, the residual nitrogen after harvest is a substrate for N2O
production during the winter period, and about half of the annual emissions can
occur between harvest and sowing. Climatic conditions in the winter have a large
effect on the annual emissions. It was observed that a warm period in the winter that
melted 10 cm of the frost induced a 100-fold increase in N2O concentration of the
soil profile (Regina et al. 2004). There was a clear difference to a similarly managed
16 K. Regina et al.

field in northern Finland where frost was constant, however, and concentrations of
N2O in the soil remained low for the whole winter and no production of N2O was
observed.

2.3.2.4 Climatic Impact

The net climatic impact of a hectare of cropland can be estimated by converting the
emissions of CH4 and N2O to carbon dioxide (Myhre et al. 2013). The calculated
values for net global warming potential of annual and perennial cropping are 32 and
18 t CO2 eq. ha−1 per year suggesting almost double emission rates from annual
compared to perennial crops (Table 2.3). However, a valid comparison requires
comparing crop types within the same site. This data set is biased in the case of
perennial crops as half of the observations come from high-yielding bioenergy
crops. Even if this data set is too small for a robust comparison, the results point to
the direction that less frequent soil disturbance slows down peat decomposition and
thus diminishes the climatic impact of cultivation on organic soils.

2.4 Mitigation Options

Due to the short growing period prevailing in Finland, the most feasible manage-
ment change to reduce the climatic impact of any type of agricultural soils would be
reducing the period of bare fallow after harvest. This has not been studied in field
experiments with greenhouse gas emission measurements, but the lower emissions
rates from annual compared to perennial crops suggest that the longer the vegetated
period annually, the smaller are the environmental effects of a cultivated field. Bare
soil is prone to losses through runoff, leaching and gaseous emissions. A growing
plant like a cover crop takes up nitrogen and has the potential to reduce leaching
losses (Valkama et al. 2015) and potentially losses as N2O if the risk of increased
N2O emission from the decomposing residues of the cover crop can be
avoided. However, the risk of increasing the annual emissions with the presence of
a cover crop is evident as revealed in the meta-analysis of Han et al. (2017) indi-
cating that while the after-harvest emissions of N2O are reduced with the presence
of a cover crop, the annual emissions may not be. In any case, the extra crop
residues of the cover crop have the potential for carbon stock increment in mineral
soils (Poeplau and Don 2015). Including cover crops in rotation would compensate
for the current low carbon input in crop residues and thus help to maintain carbon
stocks and fertility of croplands. Other means of avoiding losses after harvest
would be inclusion of autumn-sown crops in the rotations or spring tillage instead
of autumn tillage. The above-mentioned practices may become more common as
the climate warms and survival of the vegetation in the autumn period becomes
more likely.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Still Olivia kept silent and it was the old man who answered Aunt
Cassie. “He wanted to be buried here.... He wrote to ask me, when he was
dying.”
“He had no right to make such a request. He forfeited all rights by his
behavior. I say it again and I’ll keep on saying it. He ought never to have
been brought back here ... after people even forgot whether he was alive or
dead.”
The perilous calm had settled over Olivia.... She had been looking out of
the window across the marshes into the distance, and when she turned she
spoke with a terrible quietness. She said: “You may do with Horace
Pentland’s body what you like. It is more your affair than mine, for I never
saw him in my life. But it is my son who is dead ... my son, who belongs to
me more than to any of you. You may bury Horace Pentland on the same
day ... at the same service, even in the same grave. Things like that can’t
matter very much after death. You can’t go on pretending forever.... Death
is too strong for that. It’s stronger than any of us puny creatures because it’s
the one truth we can’t avoid. It’s got nothing to do with prejudices and pride
and respectability. In a hundred years—even in a year, in a month, what will
it matter what we’ve done with Horace Pentland’s body?”
She rose, still enveloped in the perilous calm, and said: “I’ll leave
Horace Pentland to you two. There is none of his blood in my veins.
Whatever you do, I shall not object ... only I wouldn’t be too shabby in
dealing with death.”
She went out, leaving Aunt Cassie exhausted and breathless and
confused. The old woman had won her battle about the burial of Horace
Pentland, yet she had suffered a great defeat. She must have seen that she
had really lost everything, for Olivia somehow had gone to the root of
things, in the presence of John Pentland, who was himself so near to death.
(Olivia daring to say proudly, as if she actually scorned the Pentland name,
“There is none of his blood in my veins.”)
But it was a defeat which Olivia knew she would never admit: that was
one of the qualities which made it impossible to deal with Aunt Cassie.
Perhaps, even as she sat there dabbing at her eyes, she was choosing new
weapons for a struggle which had come at last into the open because it was
impossible any longer to do battle through so weak and shifting an ally as
Anson.
 She was a natural martyr, Aunt Cassie. Martyrdom was the great
feminine weapon of her Victorian day and she was practised in it; she had
learned all its subtleties in the years she had lain wrapped in a shawl on a
sofa subduing the full-blooded Mr. Struthers.
And Olivia knew as she left the room that in the future she would have
to deal with a poor, abused, invalid aunt who gave all her strength in doing
good works and received in return only cruelty and heartlessness from an
outsider, from an intruder, a kind of adventuress who had wormed her way
into the heart of the Pentland family. Aunt Cassie, by a kind of art of which
she possessed the secret, would somehow make it all seem so.
2

The heat did not go away. It hung in a quivering cloud over the whole
countryside, enveloping the black procession which moved through the
lanes into the highroad and thence through the clusters of ugly stucco
bungalows inhabited by the mill-workers, on its way past the deserted
meeting-house where Preserved Pentland had once harangued a tough and
sturdy congregation and the Rev. Josiah Milford had set out with his flock
for the Western Reserve.... It enveloped the black, slow-moving procession
to the very doors of the cool, ivy-covered stone church (built like a stage
piece to imitate some English county church) where the Pentlands
worshiped the more polite, compromising gods scorned and berated by the
witch-burner. On the way, beneath the elms of High Street, Polish women
and children stopped to stare and cross themselves at the sight of the grand
procession.
The little church seemed peaceful after the heat and the stir of the
Durham street, peaceful and hushed and crowded to the doors by the
relatives and connections of the family. Even the back pews were filled by
the poor half-forgotten remnants of the family who had no wealth to carry
them smoothly along the stream of life. Old Mrs. Featherstone (who did
washing) was there sobbing because she sobbed at all funerals, and old
Miss Haddon, the genteel Pentland cousin, dressed even in the midst of
summer in her inevitable cape of thick black broadcloth, and Mrs. Malson,
shabby-genteel in her foulards and high-pitched bonnet, and Miss
Murgatroyd whose bullfinch house was now “Ye Witch’s Broome” where
one got bad tea and melancholy sandwiches....
 Together Bishop Smallwood and Aunt Cassie had planned a service
calculated skilfully to harrow the feelings and give full scope to the vast
emotional capacities of their generation and background.
They chose the most emotional of hymns, and Bishop Smallwood,
renowned for his effect upon pious and sentimental old ladies, said a few
insincere and pompous words which threw Aunt Cassie and poor old Mrs.
Featherstone into fresh excesses of grief. The services for the boy became a
barbaric rite dedicated not to his brief and pathetic existence but to a
glorification of the name he bore and of all those traits—the narrowness, the
snobbery, the lower middle-class respect for property—which had
culminated in the lingering tragedy of his sickly life. In their respective
pews Anson and Aunt Cassie swelled with pride at the mention of the
Pentland ancestry. Even the sight of the vigorous, practical, stocky Polish
women staring round-eyed at the funeral procession a little before, returned
to them now in a wave of pride and secret elation. The same emotion in
some way filtered back through the little church from the pulpit where
Bishop Smallwood (with the sob in his voice which had won him prizes at
the seminary) stood surrounded by midsummer flowers, through all the
relatives and connections, until far in the back among the more obscure and
remote ones it became simply a pride in their relation to New England and
the ancient dying village that was fast disappearing beneath the inroads of a
more vigorous world. Something of the Pentland enchantment engulfed
them all, even old Mrs. Featherstone, with her poor back bent from washing
to support the four defective grandchildren who ought never to have been
born. Through her facile tears (she wept because it was the only pleasure
left her) there shone the light of a pride in belonging to these people who
had persecuted witches and evolved transcendentalism and Mr. Lowell and
Doctor Holmes and the good, kind Mr. Longfellow. It raised her somehow
above the level of those hardy foreigners who worshiped the Scarlet Woman
of Rome and jostled her on the sidewalks of High Street.
In all the little church there were only two or three, perhaps, who
escaped that sudden mystical surge of self-satisfaction.... O’Hara, who was
forever outside the caste, and Olivia and old John Pentland, sitting there
side by side so filled with sorrow that they did not even resent the antics of
Bishop Smallwood. Sabine (who had come, after all, to the services) sensed
the intensity of the engulfing emotion. It filled her with a sense of slow,
cold, impotent rage.
 As the little procession left the church, wiping its eyes and murmuring in
lugubrious tones, the clouds which a little earlier had sprung up against the
distant horizon began to darken the whole sky. The air became so still that
the leaves on the tall, drooping elms hung as motionless as leaves in a
painted picture, and far away, gently at first, and then with a slow,
increasing menace, rose the sound of distant echoing thunder. Ill at ease, the
mourners gathered in little groups about the steps, regarding alternately the
threatening sky and the waiting hearse, and presently, one by one, the more
timorous ones began to drift sheepishly away. Others followed them slowly
until by the time the coffin was borne out, they had all melted away save for
the members of the “immediate family” and one or two others. Sabine
remained, and O’Hara and old Mrs. Soames (leaning on John Pentland’s
arm as if it were her grandson who was dead), and old Miss Haddon in her
black cape, and the pall-bearers, and of course Bishop Smallwood and the
country rector who, in the presence of this august and saintly pillar of the
church, had faded to insignificance. Besides these there were one or two
other relatives, like Struthers Pentland, a fussy little bald man (cousin of
John Pentland and of the disgraceful Horace), who had never married but
devoted himself instead to fathering the boys of his classes at Harvard.
It was this little group which entered the motors and hurried off after the
hearse in its shameless race with the oncoming storm.

The town burial-ground lay at the top of a high, bald hill where the first
settlers of Durham had chosen to dispose of their dead, and the ancient
roadway that led up to it was far too steep and stony to permit the passing
of motors, so that part way up the hill the party was forced to descend and
make the remainder of the journey on foot. As they assembled, silently but
in haste, about the open, waiting grave, the sound of the thunder
accompanied now by wild flashes of lightning, drew nearer and nearer, and
the leaves of the stunted trees and shrubs which a moment before had been
so still, began to dance and shake madly in the green light that preceded the
storm.
Bishop Smallwood, by nature a timorous man, stood beside the grave
opening his jewel-encrusted Prayer Book (he was very High Church and
fond of incense and precious stones) and fingering the pages nervously,
now looking down at them, now regarding the stolid Polish grave-diggers
who stood about waiting to bury the last of the Pentlands. There were
irritating small delays, but at last everything was ready and the Bishop,
reading as hastily as he dared, began the service in a voice less rich and
theatrical than usual.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord....”
And what followed was lost in a violent crash of thunder so that the
Bishop was able to omit a line or two without being discovered. The few
trees on the bald hill began to sway and rock, bending low toward the earth,
and the crape veils of the women performed wild black writhings. In the
uproar of wind and thunder only a sentence or two of the service became
audible....
“For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, seeing that the
past is as a watch in the night....”
And then again a wild, angry Nature took possession of the services,
drowning out the anxious voice of the Bishop and the loud theatrical sobs of
Aunt Cassie, and again there was a sudden breathless hush and the sound of
the Bishop’s voice, so pitiful and insignificant in the midst of the storm,
reading....
“O teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto
wisdom.”
And again:
“For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God in His Providence to take
out of the world the soul of our deceased brother.”
And at last, with relief, the feeble, reedlike voice, repeating with less
monotony than usual: “The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of
God and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore. Amen.”
Sabine, in whose hard nature there lay some hidden thing which exulted
in storms, barely heard the service. She stood there watching the wild
beauty of the sky and the distant sea and the marshes and thinking how
different a thing the burial of the first Pentland must have been from the
timorous, hurried rite that marked the passing of the last. She kept seeing
those first fanatical, hard-faced, rugged Puritans standing above their tombs
like ghosts watching ironically the genteel figure of the Apostle to the
Genteel and his jeweled Prayer Book....
 The Polish grave-diggers set about their work stolidly indifferent to the
storm, and before the first motor had started down the steep and stony path,
the rain came with a wild, insane violence, sweeping inward in a wall
across the sea and the black marshes. Sabine, at the door of her motor,
raised her head and breathed deeply, as if the savage, destructive force of
the storm filled her with a kind of ecstasy.

On the following day, cool after the storm and bright and clear, a second
procession made its way up the stony path to the top of the bald hill, only
this time Bishop Smallwood was not there, nor Cousin Struthers Pentland,
for they had both been called away suddenly and mysteriously. And Anson
Pentland was not there because he would have nothing to do with a
blackguard like Horace Pentland, even in death. In the little group about the
open grave stood Olivia and John Pentland and Aunt Cassie, who had come
because, after all, the dead man’s name was Pentland, and Miss Haddon, (in
her heavy broadcloth cape), who never missed any funeral and had learned
about this one from her friend, the undertaker, who kept her perpetually au
courant. There were not even any friends to carry the coffin to the grave,
and so this labor was divided between the undertaker’s men and the grave-
diggers....
And the service began again, read this time by the rector, who since the
departure of the Bishop seemed to have grown a foot in stature....
“I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord....
“For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, seeing that is
past as a watch in the night....
“O teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto
wisdom.”
Aunt Cassie wept again, though the performance was less good than on
the day before, but Olivia and John Pentland stood in silence while Horace
Pentland was buried at last in the midst of that little colony of grim and
respectable dead.
Sabine was there, too, standing at a little distance, as if she had a
contempt for all funerals. She had known Horace Pentland in life and she
had gone to see him in his long exile whenever her wanderings led her to
the south of France, less from affection than because it irritated the others in
the family. (He must have been happier in that warm, rich country than he
could ever have been in this cold, stony land.) But she had come to-day less
for sentimental reasons than because it gave her the opportunity of a
triumph over Aunt Cassie. She could watch Aunt Cassie out of her cold
green eyes while they all stood about to bury the family skeleton. Sabine,
who had not been to a funeral in the twenty-five years since her father’s
death, had climbed the stony hill to the Durham town burial-ground twice in
as many days....
The rector was speaking again....
“The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God and the
Fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore. Amen.”
The little group turned away in silence, and in silence disappeared over
the rim of the hill down the steep path. The secret burial was finished and
Horace Pentland was left alone with the Polish grave-diggers, come home
at last.
3

The peace which had taken possession of Olivia as she sat alone by the
side of her dead son, returned to her slowly with the passing of the
excitement over the funeral. Indeed, she was for once thankful for the
listless, futile enchantment which invested the quiet old world. It soothed
her at a moment when, all interest having departed from life, she wanted
merely to be left in peace. She came to see for a certainty that there was no
tragedy in her son’s death; the only tragedy had been that he had ever lived
at all such a baffled, painful, hopeless existence. And now, after so many
years of anxiety, there was peace and a relaxation that seemed strange and
in a way delicious ... moments when, lying in the chaise longue by the
window overlooking the marshes, she was enveloped by deep and healing
solitude. Even the visits of Aunt Cassie, who would have forced her way
into Olivia’s room in the interests of “duty,” made only a vague, dreamlike
impression. The old lady became more and more a droning, busy insect, the
sound of whose buzzing grew daily more distant and vague, like the sound
of a fly against a window-pane heard through veils of sleep.
From her window she sometimes had a distant view of the old man,
riding alone now, in the trap across the fields behind the old white horse,
and sometimes she caught a glimpse of his lean figure riding the savage red
mare along the lanes. He no longer went alone with the mare; he had
yielded to Higgins’ insistent warnings of her bad temper and permitted the
groom to go with him, always at his side or a little behind to guard him,
riding a polo pony with an ease and grace which made horse and man seem
a single creature ... a kind of centaur. On a horse the ugliness of the robust,
animal little man seemed to flow away. It was as if he had been born thus,
on a horse, and was awkward and ill at ease with his feet on the earth.
And Olivia knew the thought that was always in the mind of her father-
in-law as he rode across the stony, barren fields. He was thinking all the
while that all this land, all this fortune, even Aunt Cassie’s carefully tended
pile, would one day belong to a family of some other name, perhaps a name
which he had never even heard.
There were no more Pentlands. Sybil and her husband would be rich,
enormously so, with the Pentland money and Olivia’s money ... but there
would never be any more Pentlands. It had all come to an end in this ...
futility and oblivion. In another hundred years the name would exist, if it
existed at all, only as a memory, embalmed within the pages of Anson’s
book.
The new melancholy which settled over the house came in the end even
to touch the spirit of Sybil, so young and so eager for experience, like a
noxious mildew. Olivia noticed it first in a certain shadowy listlessness that
seemed to touch every action of the girl, and then in an occasional faint sigh
of weariness, and in the visits the girl paid her in her room, and in the way
she gave up willingly evenings at Brook Cottage to stay at home with her
mother. She saw that Sybil, who had always been so eager, was touched by
the sense of futility which she (Olivia) had battled for so long. And Sybil,
Sybil of them all, alone possessed the chance of being saved.
She thought, “I must not come to lean on her. I must not be the sort of
mother who spoils the life of her child.”
And when John Pentland came to sit listlessly by her side, sometimes in
silence, sometimes making empty speeches that meant nothing in an effort
to cover his despair, she saw that he, too, had come to her for the strength
which she alone could give him. Even old Mrs. Soames had failed him, for
she lay ill again and able to see him only for a few minutes each day. (It
was Sabine’s opinion, uttered during one of her morning visits, that these
strange sudden illnesses came from overdoses of drugs.)
 So she came to see that she was being a coward to abandon the struggle
now, and she rose one morning almost at dawn to put on her riding-clothes
and set out with Sybil across the wet meadows to meet O’Hara. She
returned with something of her pallor gone and a manner almost of gaiety,
her spirit heightened by the air, the contact with O’Hara and the sense of
having taken up the struggle once more.
Sabine, always watchful, noticed the difference and put it down to the
presence of O’Hara alone, and in this she was not far wrong, for set down
there in Durham, he affected Olivia powerfully as one who had no past but
only a future. With him she could talk of things which lay ahead—of his
plans for the farm he had bought, of Sybil’s future, of his own reckless,
irresistible career.

O’Hara himself had come to a dangerous state of mind. He was one of

those men who seek fame and success less for the actual rewards than for
the satisfaction of the struggle, the fierce pleasure of winning with all the
chances against one. He had won successes already. He had his house, his
horses, his motor, his well-tailored clothes, and he knew the value of these
things, not only in the world of Durham, but in the slums and along the
wharves of Boston. He had no illusions about the imperfect workings of
democracy. He knew (perhaps because, having begun at the very bottom, he
had fought his way very near to the top) that the poor man expects a
politician to be something of a splendorous affair, especially when he has
begun his career as a very common and ordinary sort of poor man. O’Hara
was not playing his game foolishly or recklessly. When he visited the slums
or sat in at political meetings, he was a sort of universal common man, a
brother to all. When he addressed a large meeting or presided at an
assembly, he arrived in a glittering motor and appeared in the elegant
clothes suitable to a representative of the government, of power; and so he
reflected credit on those men who had played with him as boys along India
Wharf and satisfied the universal hunger in man for something more
splendorous than the machinery of a perfect democracy.
He understood the game perfectly and made no mistakes, for he had had
the best of all training—that of knowing all sorts of people in all sorts of
conditions. In himself, he embodied them all, if the simple and wholly
kindly and honest were omitted; for he was really not a simple man nor a
wholly honest one and he was too ruthless to be kindly. He understood
people (as Sabine had guessed), with their little prides and vanities and
failings and ambitions.
Aunt Cassie and Anson in the rigidity of their minds had been unjust in
thinking that their world was the goal of his ambitions. They had, in the
way of those who depend on their environment as a justification for their
own existence, placed upon it a value out of all proportion in the case of a
man like O’Hara. To them it was everything, the ultimate to be sought on
this earth, and so they supposed it must seem to O’Hara. It would have been
impossible for them to believe that he considered it only as a small part of
his large scheme of life and laid siege to it principally for the pleasure that
he found in the battle; for it was true that O’Hara, once he had won, would
not know what to do with the fruits of his victory.
Already he himself had begun to see this. He had begun to understand
that the victory was so easy that the battle held little savor for him.
Moments of satisfaction such as that which had overtaken him as he sat
talking to Sabine were growing more and more rare ... moments when he
would stop and think, “Here am I, Michael O’Hara, a nobody ... son of a
laborer and a housemaid, settled in the midst of such a world as Durham,
talking to such a woman as Mrs. Cane Callendar.”
No, the savor was beginning to fail, to go out of the struggle. He was
beginning to be bored, and as he grew bored he grew also restless and
unhappy.
Born in the Roman Catholic church, he was really neither a very
religious nor a very superstitious man. He was skeptic enough not to believe
all the faiths the church sought to impose upon him, yet he was not skeptic
enough to find peace of mind in an artificial will to believe. For so long a
time he had relied wholly upon himself that the idea of leaning for support,
even in lonely, restless moments, upon a God or a church, never even
occurred to him. He remained outwardly a Roman Catholic because by
denying the faith he would have incurred the enmity of the church and
many thousands of devout Irish and Italians. The problem simply did not
concern him deeply one way or the other.
And so he had come, guided for the moment by no very strong passion,
into the doldrums of confusion and boredom. Even his fellow-politicians in
Boston saw the change in him and complained that he displayed no very
great interest in the campaign to send him to Congress. He behaved at times
as if it made not the slightest difference to him whether he was elected to
Congress or not ... he, this Michael O’Hara who was so valuable to his
party, so engaging and shrewd, who could win for it almost anything he
chose.
And though he took care that no one should divine it, this strange state of
mind troubled him more deeply than any of his friends. He was assailed by
the certainty that there was something lacking from his life, something very
close to the foundations. Now that he was inactive and bored, he had begun
to think of himself for the first time. The fine, glorious burst of first youth,
when everything seemed part of a splendid game, was over and done now,
and he felt himself slipping away toward the borderland of middle-age.
Because he was a man of energy and passion, who loved life, he felt the
change with a keen sense of sadness. There was a kind of horror for him in
the idea of a lowered tempo of life—a fear that filled him at times with a
passionately satisfactory sort of Gaelic melancholy.
In such moments, he had quite honestly taken stock of all he possessed,
and found the amassed result bitterly unsatisfactory. He had a good enough
record. He was decidedly more honorable than most men in such a dirty
business as politics—indeed, far more honorable and freer from spites and
nastinesses than many of those who had come out of this very sacred
Durham world. He had made enough money in the course of his career, and
he was winning his battle in Durham. Yet at thirty-five life had begun to
slacken, to lose some of that zest which once had led him to rise every
morning bursting with animal spirits, his brain all a-glitter with fascinating
schemes.
And then, in the very midst of this perilous state of mind, he discovered
one morning that the old sensation of delight at rising had returned to him,
only it was not because his brain was filled with fascinating schemes. He
arose with an interest in life because he knew that in a little while he would
see Olivia Pentland. He arose, eager to fling himself on his horse and,
riding across the meadows, to wait by the abandoned gravel-pit until he saw
her coming over the dew-covered fields, radiant, it seemed to him, as the
morning itself. On the days when she did not come it was as if the bottom
had dropped out of his whole existence.
 It was not that he was a man encountering the idea of woman for the first
time. There had been women in his life always, since the very first
bedraggled Italian girl he had met as a boy among the piles of lumber along
the wharves. There had been women always because it was impossible for a
man so vigorous and full of zest, so ruthless and so scornful, to have lived
thirty-five years without them, and because he was an attractive man, filled
when he chose to be, with guile and charm, whom women found it difficult
to resist. There had been plenty of women, kept always in the background,
treated as a necessity and prevented skilfully from interfering with the more
important business of making a career.
But with Olivia Pentland, something new and disturbing had happened
to him ... something which, in his eagerness to encompass all life and
experience, possessed an overwhelming sensuous fascination. She was not
simply another woman in a procession of considerable length. Olivia
Pentland, he found, was different from any of the others ... a woman of
maturity, poised, beautiful, charming and intelligent, and besides all these
things she possessed for him a kind of fresh and iridescent bloom, the same
freshness, only a little saddened, that touched her young daughter.
In the beginning, when they had talked together while she planned the
garden at Brook Cottage, he had found himself watching her, lost in a kind
of wonder, so that he scarcely understood what she was saying. And all the
while he kept thinking, “Here is a wonderful woman ... the most wonderful
I’ve ever seen or will ever see again ... a woman who could make life a
different affair for me, who would make of love something which people
say it is.”
She had affected him thus in a way that swept aside all the vulgar and
cynical coarseness with which a man of such experience is likely to invest
the whole idea of woman. Until now women had seemed to him made to
entertain men or to provide children for them, and now he saw that there
was, after all, something in this sentiment with which people surrounded a
love affair. For a long time he searched for a word to describe Olivia and in
the end he fell back upon the old well-worn one which she always brought
to mind. She was a “lady”—and as such she had an overwhelming effect
upon his imagination.
He had said to himself that here was a woman who could understand
him, not in the aloof, analytical fashion of a clever woman like Sabine
Callendar, but in quite another way. She was a woman to whom he could
say, “I am thus and so. My life has been of this kind. My motives are of this
sort,” and she would understand, the bad with the good. She would be the
one person in the world to whom he could pour out the whole burden of
secrets, the one woman who could ever destroy the weary sense of
loneliness which sometimes afflicted him. She made him feel that, for all
his shrewdness and hard-headed scheming, she was far wiser than he would
ever be, that in a way he was a small boy who might come to her and,
burying his head in her lap, have her stroke his thick black hair. She would
understand that there were times when a man wanted to be treated thus. In
her quiet way she was a strong woman, unselfish, too, who did not feed
upon flattery and perpetual attention, the sort of woman who is precious to
a man bent upon a career. The thought of her filled him with a poignant
feeling of sadness, but in his less romantic moments he saw, too, that she
held the power of catching him up out of his growing boredom. She would
be of great value to him.
And so Sabine had not been far wrong when she thought of him as the
small boy sitting on the curbstone who had looked up at her gravely and
said, “I’m playing.” He was at times very like such an image.
But in the end he was always brought up abruptly against the hard reality
of the fact that she was already married to a man who did not want her
himself but who would never set her free, a man who perhaps would have
sacrificed everything in the world to save a scandal in his family. And
beyond these hard, tangible difficulties he discerned, too, the whole dark
decaying web, less obvious but none the less potent, in which she had
become enmeshed.
Yet these obstacles only created a fascination to a mind so complex, so
perverse, for in the solitude of his mind and in the bitterness of the long
struggle he had known, he came to hold the whole world in contempt and
saw no reason why he should not take what he wanted from this Durham
world. Obstacles such as these provided the material for a new battle, a new
source of interest in the turbulent stream of his existence; only this time
there was a difference ... that he coveted the prize itself more than the
struggle. He wanted Olivia Pentland, strangely enough, not for a moment or
even for a month or a year, but for always.
 He waited because he understood, in the shrewdness of his long
experience, that to be insistent would only startle such a woman and cause
him to lose her entirely, and because he knew of no plan of action which
could overcome the obstacles which kept them apart. He waited, as he had
done many times in his career, for circumstances to solve themselves. And
while he waited, with each time that he saw her she grew more and more
desirable, and his own invincible sense of caution became weaker and
weaker.
4

In those long days spent in her room, Olivia had come slowly to be
aware of the presence of the newcomer at Brook Cottage. It had begun on
the night of Jack’s death with the sound of his music drifting across the
marshes, and after the funeral Sabine had talked of him to Olivia with an
enthusiasm curiously foreign to her. Once or twice she had caught a glimpse
of him crossing the meadows toward O’Hara’s shining chimneys or going
down the road that led through the marshes to the sea—a tall, red-haired
young man who walked with a slight limp. Sybil, she found, was strangely
silent about him, but when she questioned the girl about her plans for the
day she found, more often than not, that they had to do with him. When she
spoke of him, Sybil had a way of blushing and saying, “He’s very nice,
Mother. I’ll bring him over when you want to see people.... I used to know
him in Paris.”
And Olivia, wisely, did not press her questions. Besides, Sabine had told
her almost all there was to know ... perhaps more than Sybil herself knew.
Sabine said, “He belongs to a rather remarkable family ... wilful,
reckless and full of spirit. His mother is probably the most remarkable of
them all. She’s a charming woman who has lived luxuriously in Paris most
of her life ... not one of the American colony. She doesn’t ape any one and
she’s incapable of pretense of any sort. She’s lived, rather alone, over there
on money ... quite a lot of money ... which seems to come out of steel-mills
in some dirty town of the Middle West. She’s one of my great friends ... a
woman of no intellect, but very beautiful and blessed with a devastating
charm. She is one of the women who was born for men.... She’s irresistible
to them, and I imagine there have been men in her life always. She was
made for men, but her taste is perfect, so her morals don’t matter.”
 The woman ... indeed all Jean de Cyon’s family ... seemed to fascinate
Sabine as she sat having tea with Olivia, for she went on and on, talking far
more than usual, describing the house of Jean’s mother, her friends, the
people whom one met at her dinners, all there was to tell about her.
“She’s the sort of woman who has existed since the beginning of time.
There’s some mystery about her early life. It has something to do with
Jean’s father. I don’t think she was happy with him. He’s never mentioned.
Of course, she’s married again now to a Frenchman ... much older than
herself ... a man, very distinguished, who has been in three cabinets. That’s
where the boy gets his French name. The old man has adopted him and
treats him like his own son. De Cyon is a good name in France, one of the
best; but of course Jean hasn’t any French blood. He’s pure American, but
he’s never seen his own country until now.”
Sabine finished her tea and putting her cup back on the Regence table
(which had come from Olivia’s mother and so found its graceful way into a
house filled with stiff early American things), she added, “It’s a remarkable
family ... wild and restless. Jean had an aunt who died in the Carmelite
convent at Lisieux, and his cousin is Lilli Barr ... a really great musician.”
She looked out of the window and after a moment said in a low voice, “Lilli
Barr is the woman whom my husband married ... but she divorced him, too,
and now we are friends ... she and I.” The familiar hard, metallic laugh
returned and she added, “I imagine our experience with him made us
sympathetic.... You see, I know the family very well. It’s the sort of blood
which produces people with a genius for life ... for living in the moment.”
She did not say that Jean and his mother and the ruthless cousin Lilli
Barr fascinated her because they stood in a way for the freedom toward
which she had been struggling through all the years since she escaped from
Durham. They were free in a way from countries, from towns, from laws,
from prejudices, even in a way from nationality. She had hoped once that
Jean might interest himself in her own sullen, independent, clever Thérèse,
but in her knowledge of the world she had long ago abandoned that hope,
knowing that a boy so violent and romantic, so influenced by an upbringing
among Frenchmen, a youth so completely masculine, was certain to seek a
girl more soft and gentle and feminine than Thérèse. She knew it was
inevitable that he should fall in love with a girl like Sybil, and in a way she
was content because it fell in admirably with her own indolent plans. The
Pentlands were certain to look upon Jean de Cyon as a sort of gipsy, and
when they knew the whole truth....
The speculation fascinated her. The summer in Durham, even with the
shadow of Jack’s death flung across it, was not proving as dreadful as she
had feared; and this new development interested her as something she had
never before observed ... an idyllic love affair between two young people
who each seemed to her a perfect, charming creature.
5

It had all begun on the day nearly a year earlier when all Paris was
celebrating the anniversary of the Armistice, and in the morning Sybil had
gone with Thérèse and Sabine to lay a wreath beside the flame at the Arc de
Triomphe (for the war was one of the unaccountable things about which
Sabine chose to make a display of sentiment). And afterward she played in
the garden with the dogs which they would not let her keep at the school in
Saint-Cloud, and then she had gone into the house to find there a
fascinating and beautiful woman of perhaps fifty—a Madame de Cyon, who
had come to lunch, with her son, a young man of twenty-four, tall, straight
and slender, with red hair and dark blue eyes and a deep, pleasant voice. On
account of the day he was dressed in his cuirassier’s uniform of black and
silver, and because of an old wound he walked with a slight limp. Almost at
once (she remembered this when she thought of him) he had looked at her
in a frank, admiring way which gave her a sense of pleasurable excitement
wholly new in her experience.
Something in the sight of the uniform, or perhaps in the feel of the air,
the sound of the military music, the echoes of the Marseillaise and the
Sambre et Meuse, the sight of the soldiers in the street and the great Arc
with the flame burning there ... something in the feel of Paris, something
which she loved passionately, had taken possession of her. It was something
which, gathering in that moment, had settled upon the strange young man
who regarded her with such admiring eyes.
She knew vaguely that she must have fallen in love in the moment she
stood there in Sabine Callendar’s salon bowing to Lily de Cyon. The
experience had grown in intensity when, after lunch, she took him into the
garden to show him her dogs and watched him rubbing the ears of the
Doberman “Imp” and talking to the dog softly in a way which made her
know that he felt about animals as she did. He had been so pleasant in his
manner, so gentle in his bigness, so easy to talk to, as if they had always
been friends.
And then almost at once he had gone away to the Argentine, without
even seeing her again, on a trip to learn the business of cattle-raising
because he had the idea that one day he might settle himself as a rancher.
But he left behind him a vivid image which with the passing of time grew
more and more intense in the depths of a romantic nature which revolted at
the idea of Thérèse choosing a father scientifically for her child. It was an
image by which she had come, almost unconsciously, to measure other
men, even to such small details as the set of their shoulders and the way
they used their hands and the timbre of their voices. It was this she had
really meant when she said to her mother, “I know what sort of man I want
to marry. I know exactly.” She had meant, quite without knowing it, that it
must be a man like Jean de Cyon ... charming, romantic and a little wild.
She had not forgotten him, though there were moments at the school in
Saint-Cloud when she had believed she would never see him again—
moments when she was swept by a delicious sense of hopeless melancholy
in which she believed that her whole life had been blighted, and which led
her to make long and romantic entries in the diary that was kept hidden
beneath her mattress. And so as she grew more hopeless, the aura of
romance surrounding him took on colors deeper and more varied and
intense. She had grown so pale that Mademoiselle Vernueil took to dosing
her, and Thérèse accused her abruptly of having fallen in love, a thing she
denied vaguely and with overtones of romantic mystery.
And then with the return to Pentlands (a return advised by her mother on
account of Jack’s health) the image dimmed a little in the belief that even
by the wildest flights of imagination there was no chance of her seeing him
again. It became a hopeless passion; she prepared herself to forget him and,
in the wisdom of her young mind, grow accustomed to the idea of marrying
one of the tame young men who were so much more suitable and whom her
family had always known. She had watched her admirers carefully,
weighing them always against the image of the young man with red hair,
dressed in the black and silver of the cuirassiers, and beside that image they
had seemed to her—even the blond, good-looking Mannering boy—like
little boys, rather naughty and not half so old and wise as herself. She had
reconciled herself secretly and with gravity to the idea of making one of the
matches common in her world—a marriage determined by property and the
fact that her fiancé would be “the right sort of person.”
And so the whole affair had come to take on the color of a tragic
romance, to be guarded secretly. Perhaps when she was an old woman she
would tell the story to her grandchildren. She believed that whomever she
married, she would be thinking always of Jean de Cyon. It was one of those
half-comic illusions of youth in which there is more than a grain of
melancholy truth.
And then abruptly had come the news of his visit to Brook Cottage. She
still kept her secret, but not well enough to prevent her mother and Sabine
from suspecting it. She had betrayed herself first on the very night of Jack’s
death when she had said, with a sudden light in her eye, “It’s Jean de
Cyon.... I’d forgotten he was arriving to-night.” Olivia had noticed the light
because it was something which went on and on.

And at Brook Cottage young de Cyon, upset by the delay caused by the
funeral and the necessity of respecting the mourning at Pentlands, had
sulked and behaved in such a way that he would have been a nuisance to
any one save Sabine, who found amusement in the spectacle. Used to
rushing headlong toward anything he desired (as he had rushed into the
French army at seventeen and off to the Argentine nine months ago), he
turned ill-tempered and spent his days out of doors, rowing on the river and
bathing in the solitude of the great white beach. He quarreled with Thérèse,
whom he had known since she was a little girl, and tried to be as civil as
possible toward the amused Sabine.
She knew by now that he had not come to Durham through any great
interest in herself or Thérèse. She knew now how wise she had been (for the
purposes of her plan) to have included in her invitation to him the line ...
“Sybil Pentland lives on the next farm to us. You may remember her. She
lunched with us last Armistice Day.”
She saw that he rather fancied himself as a man of the world who was
being very clever in keeping his secret. He asked her about Sybil Pentland
in a casual way that was transparently artificial, and consulted her on the
lapse of time decently necessary before he broke in upon the mourning at
Pentlands, and had Miss Pentland shown any admiration for the young men
about Durham? If he had not been so charming and impatient he would
have bored Sabine to death.
The young man was afraid of only one thing ... that perhaps she had
changed in some way, that perhaps she was not in the reality as charming as
she had seemed to him in the long months of his absence. He was not
without experience (indeed, Sabine believed that he had gone to the
Argentine to escape from some Parisian complication) and he knew that
such calamitous disappointments could happen. Perhaps when he came to
know her better the glamour would fade. Perhaps she did not remember him
at all. But she seemed to him, after months of romantic brooding, the most
desirable woman he had ever seen.

It was a new world in which he discovered himself, in some way a newer

and more different world than the vast grass-covered plains from which he
had just come. People about Durham, he learned, had a way of saying that
Boston and Durham were like England, but this he put down quietly as a
kind of snobbery, because Boston and Durham weren’t like England at all,
so far as he could see; in spots Boston and Durham seemed old, but there
wasn’t the same richness, the same glamour about them. They should have
been romantic and yet they were not; they were more, it seemed to him, like
the illustrations in a school history. They were dry ... sec, he thought,
considering the French word better in this case on account of its sound.
And it wasn’t the likeness to England that he found interesting, but
rather the difference ... the bleak rawness of the countryside and the sight of
whole colonies of peoples as strange and foreign as the Czechs and Poles
providing a sort of alien background to the whole picture.
He had gone about the business of becoming acquainted with his own
country in a thorough, energetic fashion, and being a sensuous youth, filled
with a taste for colors and sounds and all the emanations of the spectacle of
life, he was acutely conscious of it.
To Sabine, he said, “You know the funny thing is that it seems to me like
coming home. It makes me feel that I belong in America ... not in Durham,
but in New York or some of those big roaring towns I’ve passed through.”
He spoke, naturally enough, not at all like an American but in the
clipped English fashion, rather swallowing his words, and now and then
with a faint trace of French intonation. His voice was deeper and richer than
the New England voices, with their way of calling Charles Street “Challs
Street” and sacred Harvard ... “Havaad.”
It was the spectacle of New York which had fascinated him more than
any other because it surpassed all his dreams of it and all the descriptions
people had given him of its immense force and barbaric splendor and the
incredible variety of tongues and people. New York, Sabine told him with a
consciousness of uttering treason, was America, far more than the sort of
life he would encounter in Durham.
As he talked to Sabine of New York, he would rise to that pitch of
excitement and enthusiasm which comes to people keenly alive. He even
confided in her that he had left Europe never to return there to live.
“It’s old country,” he said, “and if one has been brought up there, as I’ve
been, there’s no reason for going back there to live. In a way it’s a dead
world ... dead surely in comparison to the Americas. And it’s the future that
interests me ... not the past. I want to be where the most is going on ... in the
center of things.”
When he was not playing the piano wildly, or talking to Sabine, or
fussing about with Thérèse among the frogs and insects of the laboratory
she had rigged up on the glass-enclosed piazza, he was walking about the
garden in a state of suppressed excitement, turning over and over in his
young mind his own problem and the plans he had for adjusting himself in
this vigorous country. To discover it now, at the age of twenty-five, was an
exciting experience. He was beginning to understand those young
Americans he had encountered occasionally in Europe (like his cousin
Fergus Tolliver, who died in the war), who seemed so alive, so filled with a
reckless sense of adventure ... young men irresistible in such an old, tired
world, because Nature itself was on their side.
To ease his impatience he sought refuge in a furious physical activity,
rowing, swimming and driving with Sabine about the Durham countryside.
He could not walk far, on account of the trouble caused by his old wound,
but he got as far as O’Hara’s house, where he met the Irishman and they
became friends. O’Hara turned over to him a canoe and a rowing-scull and
told him that whenever his leg was better he might have a horse from his
stables.
One morning as he pulled his canoe up the muddy bank of the river after
his early exercise, he heard the sound of hoofs in the thick mud near at hand