Landfills are one of the major anthropogenic sources of the greenhouse gas (GHG) methane that, together with carbon dioxide, constitute the two principal components of landfill gas. Various methods exist for the purpose of estimatign the production of landfill gas and the potential emissions to the atmosphere. These range from the low cost approach of modelling, based on simplified and often assumed parameters, to the more costly methods of in situ testing to determine gas generation. Each approach presents difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of emissions to the atmosphere. This paper presnets a new method of estimatign the potential emissions of gases from a landfill tot he atmosphere. It is based on heauristic inverse modelling, that is, the inference of source strength from measurements of the methane and carbon dioxide concentrations in the shallow layers of the landfill cover material, together with stochastic modelling of the source strength. It has the advantages of being readily able to incorporate new information to refine the estimates, and of allowing the communication of the inherenet uncertainties to non-expert parties iwth relative ease.
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