For producers who want to both save the environment and their fertilizer, an emission-measuring app is being developed at the University of Saskatchewan.

Dr. Steve Shirtliffe  says when nitrogen fertilizer becomes too wet and warm for several days, nitrous oxide is released into the air. This is both a detriment to the environment and the wallet, as that fertilizer was wasted.

Using satellite images of every field across Western Canada, the team aims to quantify and map what areas are the worst offenders. After the data is collected, the team will create an app that displays emission levels across Western Canada in a partially anonymous way as to not upset the marketplace.

“We’ll probably not present it as detailed as we first derive it…It’s kind of like how you can look up what the yield was in a rural municipality, but you can’t look and see what a field yielded.”

For producer’s worried about being punished for their emission rates, Shirtliffe says that won’t be an issue.

“We’re not trying to tell on farmers or anything like that. It’s important to realize that here in Canada, our emissions of nitrous oxide are some of the lowest in the world, because we do have a semi-arid climate.”

If a producer isn’t happy with the emission rates on his land, they can then make the decision to bring in dirt and alter the landscape of their fields to reduce the risk.

“If a farmer has a number from a model that predicts your field emits ‘this much’, we don’t know, but we suspect that the vast majority of those nitrous oxide emissions is going to come from a very small part of the land. So, they won’t have to change everything on their land, and it’s actually going to save the farmer money in that way.”

The project recently received almost $440,000 in funding from the Canadian Space Agency over the next three years.