Despite the importance of methane, previous books on climate change have tended to neglect the topic, instead focusing on carbon dioxide. This timely and authoritative book provides the only comprehensive and balanced overview of our current knowledge of sources of methane and how these might be controlled to limit future climate change. It describes how methane is derived from the anaerobic metabolism of micro-organisms, whether in wetlands or rice fields, manure, landfill or wastewater, or the digestive systems of cattle and other ruminant animals. It highlights how sources of methane might themselves be affected by climate change. It is shown how numerous point sources of methane have the potential to be more easily addressed than sources of carbon dioxide and therefore contribute significantly to the climate change mitigation in the 21st century.

Pete Smith is the Royal Society-Wolfson Professor of Soils & Global Change, in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Aberdeen. His main areas of expertise are in modelling greenhouse gas/carbon mitigation, bio-energy for fossil fuel offsets, and biological carbon sequestration.

Andre van Amstel is Assistant professor in the Dept. Environmental Sciences at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He previously taught physical geography in Amsterdam. He worked at the Institute of Public Health and the Environment from 1991 to 1996 where he was responsible for the national greenhouse gas emissions inventories for the National Communication on Climate Policies from the Netherlands to the Climate Convention. In 2006 he was one of the coordinating lead authors for the volume on agriculture, forestry and land use of the IPCC Guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories.