Informing Nature-based Climate Solutions for the United States with the best-available science

Kimberly A. Novick, Stefan Metzger, William R.L. Anderegg, Mallory Barnes, Daniela S. Cala, Kaiyu Guan, Kyle S. Hemes, David Y. Hollinger, Jitendra Kumar, Marcy Litvak, Danica Lombardozzi, Caroline P. Normile, Patty Oikawa, Benjamin R.K. Runkle, Margaret Torn, Susanne Wiesner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

37 Scopus citations

Abstract

Nature-based Climate Solutions (NbCS) are managed alterations to ecosystems designed to increase carbon sequestration or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While they have growing public and private support, the realizable benefits and unintended consequences of NbCS are not well understood. At regional scales where policy decisions are often made, NbCS benefits are estimated from soil and tree survey data that can miss important carbon sources and sinks within an ecosystem, and do not reveal the biophysical impacts of NbCS for local water and energy cycles. The only direct observations of ecosystem-scale carbon fluxes, for example, by eddy covariance flux towers, have not yet been systematically assessed for what they can tell us about NbCS potentials, and state-of-the-art remote sensing products and land-surface models are not yet being widely used to inform NbCS policymaking or implementation. As a result, there is a critical mismatch between the point- and tree-scale data most often used to assess NbCS benefits and impacts, the ecosystem and landscape scales where NbCS projects are implemented, and the regional to continental scales most relevant to policymaking. Here, we propose a research agenda to confront these gaps using data and tools that have long been used to understand the mechanisms driving ecosystem carbon and energy cycling, but have not yet been widely applied to NbCS. We outline steps for creating robust NbCS assessments at both local to regional scales that are informed by ecosystem-scale observations, and which consider concurrent biophysical impacts, future climate feedbacks, and the need for equitable and inclusive NbCS implementation strategies. We contend that these research goals can largely be accomplished by shifting the scales at which pre-existing tools are applied and blended together, although we also highlight some opportunities for more radical shifts in approach.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3778-3794
Number of pages17
JournalGlobal Change Biology
Volume28
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2022

Funding

We thank Martin De Kauwe and one anonymous reviewer for their helpful feedback. We acknowledge and thank the AmeriFlux Management Project and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science for providing a platform for this collaboration, and for providing the data that inform Figure 4 . We thank George Burba, Ankur Desai, and David Durden for providing a range of cost scenarios. KN and BRKR recognize NSF CAREER grant funding under award numbers 1552747 and 1752083, respectively, and KN acknowledges support from the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University through the Fischer Faculty Fellowship and Paul H. O'Neil Chair. KSH was supported by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Ecological Observatory Network—a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation and operated under cooperative agreement by Battelle. We thank Martin De Kauwe and one anonymous reviewer for their helpful feedback. We acknowledge and thank the AmeriFlux Management Project and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science for providing a platform for this collaboration, and for providing the data that inform Figure 4. We thank George Burba, Ankur Desai, and David Durden for providing a range of cost scenarios. KN and BRKR recognize NSF CAREER grant funding under award numbers 1552747 and 1752083, respectively, and KN acknowledges support from the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University through the Fischer Faculty Fellowship and Paul H. O'Neil Chair. KSH was supported by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Ecological Observatory Network—a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation and operated under cooperative agreement by Battelle.

FundersFunder number
AmeriFlux Management Project
Ankur Desai
George Burba
O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University
National Science Foundation1752083, 1552747
U.S. Department of Energy
Battelle
Office of Science
Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

    Keywords

    • climate adaptation
    • climate mitigation
    • ecosystem carbon cycling
    • natural climate solutions
    • net-zero

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