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Land Use/Land Cover Change Land Use/Land Cover Change and the Carbon Cycleand the Carbon Cycle

A workshop organized by the

Land Use and Carbon Cycle Steering groups of the USGCRP

ReferenceReference

Carbon Cycle building blocks

Land Use building blocks

Ecosystems building blocks

AudienceAudience

Program Managers (IWGs) – one slide by Friday– SSGs in science planning process

Principals of USGCRP

OSTP

Assistant Secretaries

A champion

EOS, Earth Observer

Workshop PurposeWorkshop Purpose

To bring together scientists in land use/land cover change science and carbon cycle science to – share research results– identify uncertainties– caucus on approaches to reduce those uncertainties– foster collaboration in land use/land cover change

and carbon studies across traditional disciplinary lines.

ContextContext

New administration (CCSP to USGCRP)– Opportunities for rethinking strategic plans: carbon

cycle process underway, land use ?

NRC Study recommends reorganizing CCSP around integrated problems and themes

External drivers

Development of carbon markets– Needs for monitoring, assessment, management

Biofuels – policies mandate increases in use

Effects of climate change on ecosystems

...

ContextContext• Clear opportunities for closer coordination between land use

and carbon cycle communities exist and need to be developed! • Important to understand how existing interagency groups will be

organized in the future in order to move forward as a community.

• This meeting is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue and interaction between land-use and carbon cycling communities. Better coordination may be the single best outcome of this workshop.

• The Land Use and Carbon Cycle communities • have had success within their separate realms.

• recognize the scientific opportunities to join forces and push these important questions forward.

• Lens of coupled natural and human systems provides a fresh approach to take on these questions.

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DefinitionsDefinitions

• Land use

• Land cover

• Land management (policy, management)

• Resource management

• Land characteristics

• Carbon as a resource

• Competing uses for land

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Breakout #1 QuestionsBreakout #1 Questions

What management activities have the biggest potential to affect measurable long-term carbon storage?

What don’t we know about the limits and potential for management to affect carbon cycle?

What types of policies or institutions need to be implemented to make the necessary changes in land use and practices?

Demands for the ScienceDemands for the Science• USFS directed to use best available science on climate

change in forest plan revision.

• BLM

• Climate action plans

• Interest groups: forest industry (NCASI), conservation groups

• International audiences (Canada, WorldBank, CarboNA)

• Climate negotiations and subsequent implementation

• Integrated science provides opportunities to link land management options to development of supply curves for mitigation options.

Science Needs in Land ManagementScience Needs in Land Management• Conversion:

• Aforestation, deforestation• Influences on initial land use changes-

Transportation networks in terms of deforestation, extraction issues

• Conversion/ Management: • Protected ecosystems- management and creation• Soil Carbon/soil change• Carbon footprint of human development/settlement

patterns/Landscape design/urban forestry/land degradation

• Bioenergy production design

Science Needs in Land ManagementScience Needs in Land Management• Management

• Fire as a land management tool, fire in wildlands, fire: fuel production

• Agricultural• Forestry alternatives (concession design, industrial

forestry)• shrubland/grassland on public/private lands lands• Fire as a land management tool, fire in wildlands,

fire: fuel production.• Agricultural• Forestry alternatives (concession design, industrial

forestry)• shrubland/grassland on public/private lands lands

Science Needs in Land ManagementScience Needs in Land Management• Should forest management focus on maximizing carbon

stocks or carbon removals (wood fiber energy)

• Soil carbon – What do we know about the impact of land use management below ground management impact

• Understanding the coupled biogeochemical cycle (nitrogen, and other trace gas emissions)

• What current magnitude of carbon sequestration via woody encroachment

• How do past and current land use choices (path dependency) limit future options/opportunities?

• What are the maximum carbon stocks achievable?

Science Needs in Land ManagementScience Needs in Land Management• What will climate change do to carbon stocks and

fluxes?

• Leakage/Displacement of land use and carbon policy impacts

• How do you communicate to the public about how land is managed and its carbon and other ecosystem implications?

• Under what conditions are top down vs. bottom up policies effective at addressing carbon issues?

• What is the relative impact of human settlement patterns and human activities in those landscapes?

Science Needs in Land ManagementScience Needs in Land Management• How does forest management influence dynamic pools of

C in different ecological settings (across different timescales)?

• What are the opportunities/risks for C seq. and the magnitudes that are possible (short and long term)

• Spatially explicit and geographically contextualized to the best of our ability.

• What are the feedbacks (including unintended consequences) to climate of managed C?

• Is C property? And what are the rights/responsibilities of ownership?

• How do we determine/reduce uncertainty to verify C storage of management of effective C markets and insure against risks?

Science Needs in Land ManagementScience Needs in Land Management• To what extent can agriculture land management

(conservation/crop/set-asides) increase and sustain net C storage?

• What are the ecosystem enhancement factors that will increase C storage (nutrient cycles, water, and management)?

• How do we recapture C in urban (POTW) and rural (CAFO) waste streams?

• How does past management affect future C storage?

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Breakout #2 QuestionsBreakout #2 Questions

What ecosystem observations are needed to improve our understanding of carbon on land?

What land-use observations are needed to improve our understanding of how carbon can be managed?

Data NeedsData Needs

Legacy effects on the land use impacts on C cycle

Better in situ observations of various sorts in much of the world

Observations documenting nature of disturbance & interactions between disturbances

Global soil type / properties maps: Peat lands, Frozen soils

Methane monitoring systems

Seasonality and phenology (esp. tropical)

Fine / high resolution satellite / aerial imagery

Improve monitoring of people and patterns of human settlement and development

Invasive species impacts on carbon storage and cycling

Data NeedsData NeedsWhat are the land management practices are being used in croplands, forested lands, grazing lands?

What are approaches to enable change attribution to distinguish land use change from land cover change?

How can proprietary/withheld data be incorporated & analyzed without compromising personal data?

Who owns this parcel? Who is responsible for its management? (Lack of a national cadastre.)

What is the value of this parcel? (Lack of integrated land value databases.)

What is the pattern of the transportation networks (roads & rails) past, present, future US & aboard.

When & where are natural disasters, conflicts & refugees? (Campaign for monitoring disturbances that can result in land use change.)

Data NeedsData NeedsWhat is the geographic distribution of current C stocks, above & belowground?

What is the geographic distribution of soil C sequestration potential?

What is the baseline C balance for major land uses within ecoregions?

What is the energy budget for major land use practices within ecoregions?

How do you reconcile scales of flux tower and remote sensing observations to map fluxes synoptically?

What are the resolutions & extents of ECVs+ required to characterize carbon dynamics arising from natural & anthropogenic disturbances?

Data NeedsData NeedsWhat are the resolutions and extents of ECVs+ required to inform carbon management?

What is the phenology/seasonality of ECVs+ including variability and trends?

We know the area of fire and insects, but what about the impact on C?

What are the socio-economic indicators of C storage and change? (development patterns, e.g. transportation network pattern)

Questions of policy/time/spatial scale?

What is the magnitude rate and pattern of forest conversion? Fragmentation? Degradation? Fire? Edge-effect ?

How can we best manage and deliver collected data?

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Breakout #3 QuestionsBreakout #3 Questions

What are the key land use/land management processes that need to be represented?

How do we integrate models at multiple scales?

What is needed to integrate observations and couple carbon and land use/land cover models?

Stress both normative and positive applications, possible negative and positive futures and actions.

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Opportunities/Challenges for Model IntegrationOpportunities/Challenges for Model IntegrationWhat role should models play in places that may end up regulating C seq. at the regional level?

How can we make models more user-friendly? Visualization of scenarios?

How does decision-making diffuse across the landscape? How do we couple social-network analysis with LUCC models? How do we capture data related to social network dynamics?

What is the place of C storage in the context of other green/sustainable management programs given costs/benefits/risks?

How sensitive do C models need to be to fine-scale changes in LULC? What scale-dependent relationships are appropriate?

How to integrate C into “State and Transition Diagrams/Models”?

Opportunities/Challenges for Model IntegrationOpportunities/Challenges for Model Integration

How do we include macro-level economic drivers in local-level dynamics? How sensitive are decision-making processes to monetary incentives? What role does risk play in this?

How do we scale-up social data from local level to community, region, national levels? What do we lose when we scale-up?

How sensitive are regional scale models about different assumptions about boundary conditions?

– Standard set of boundary conditions and inter-comparison studies between models.

How does C storage fit into the overall climate change mitigation modeling at the regional scale in terms of base-line vs. business-as-usual?

How do we simplify the decision-making context of actors in local and regional models?

Opportunities/Challenges for Model IntegrationOpportunities/Challenges for Model Integration

How can we incorporate unexpected events/disturbances into coupled land use/carbon models?

How can models incorporate top-down policy interventions? How do you model the trade-offs between different land uses? (green space/impervious surface/urban/forestry/agro.)

How can the representation of C transformation be improved in biophysical models?

How can we incorporate hydrology, sea-level rise (salt marsh restoration), urban-climate models, surface energy balance models? (Spatial C transport models)

How will various C allocation strategies (e.g. cap and trade) influence land-use decisions and patterns?

Box or ExampleBox or Example

Alternative energy– Biofuels and bioenergy (not just ethanol)– Wind– Solar– hydro

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RecommendationsRecommendations

Establish on-going organizational linkages between land use and carbon working/steering groups within the USGCRP– Could be a new ad hoc WG– Could be joint meetings – Could be reorganization of USGCRP WGs

Don’t want to lose land use as an stand-alone element.– Need to continue to develop theory, data and methods

of land use science to support these questions, as well as others like biodiversity, water quality, etc.

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RecommendationsRecommendations

We want funding forever

Integrating social and natural sciences is important– Helps us answer important questions like reconciling

bottom-up and top-down approaches to the carbon cycle– How will the land use system react to climate change

(i.e. what’s the effect of BAU)?– Does land use fit into the solution; what policy strategies

should we follow (e.g., cap and trade)? Makes science policy relevant.

• Could represent a paradigm shift in land planning.

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