Meeting end\uffe2\uff80\uff90of\uffe2\uff80\uff90century global warming targets requires aggressive action on multiple fronts. Recent reports note the futility of addressing mitigation goals without fully engaging the agricultural sector, yet no available assessments combine both nature\uffe2\uff80\uff90based solutions (reforestation, grassland and wetland protection, and agricultural practice change) and cellulosic bioenergy for a single geographic region. Collectively, these solutions might offer a suite of climate, biodiversity, and other benefits greater than either alone. Nature\uffe2\uff80\uff90based solutions are largely constrained by the duration of carbon accrual in soils and forest biomass; each of these carbon pools will eventually saturate. Bioenergy solutions can last indefinitely but carry significant environmental risk if carelessly deployed. We detail a simplified scenario for the United States that illustrates the benefits of combining approaches. We assign a portion of non\uffe2\uff80\uff90forested former cropland to bioenergy sufficient to meet projected mid\uffe2\uff80\uff90century transportation needs, with the remainder assigned to nature\uffe2\uff80\uff90based solutions such as reforestation. Bottom\uffe2\uff80\uff90up mitigation potentials for the aggregate contributions of crop, grazing, forest, and bioenergy lands are assessed by including in a Monte Carlo model conservative ranges for cost\uffe2\uff80\uff90effective local mitigation capacities, together with ranges for (a) areal extents that avoid double counting and include realistic adoption rates and (b) the projected duration of different carbon sinks. The projected duration illustrates the net effect of eventually saturating soil carbon pools in the case of most strategies, and additionally saturating biomass carbon pools in the case of forest management. Results show a conservative end\uffe2\uff80\uff90of\uffe2\uff80\uff90century mitigation capacity of 110 (57\uffe2\uff80\uff93178) Gt CO2e for the U.S., ~50% higher than existing estimates that prioritize nature\uffe2\uff80\uff90based or bioenergy solutions separately. Further research is needed to shrink uncertainties, but there is sufficient confidence in the general magnitude and direction of a combined approach to plan for deployment now.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 1 methodologies commonly underpin project\uffe2\uff80\uff90scale carbon accounting for changes in land use and management and are used in frameworks for Life Cycle Assessment and carbon footprinting of food and energy crops. These methodologies were intended for use at large spatial scales. This can introduce error in predictions at finer spatial scales. There is an urgent need for development and implementation of higher tier methodologies that can be applied at fine spatial scales (e.g. farm/project/plantation) for food and bioenergy crop greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting to facilitate decision making in the land\uffe2\uff80\uff90based sectors. Higher tier methods have been defined by IPCC and must be well evaluated and operate across a range of domains (e.g. climate region, soil type, crop type, topography), and must account for land use transitions and management changes being implemented. Furthermore, the data required to calibrate and drive the models used at higher tiers need to be available and applicable at fine spatial resolution, covering the meteorological, soil, cropping system and management domains, with quantified uncertainties. Testing the reliability of the models will require data either from sites with repeated measurements or from chronosequences. We review current global capability for estimating changes in soil carbon at fine spatial scales and present a vision for a framework capable of quantifying land use change and management impacts on soil carbon, which could be used for addressing issues such as bioenergy and biofuel sustainability, food security, forest protection, and direct/indirect impacts of land use change. The aim of this framework is to provide a globally accepted standard of carbon measurement and modelling appropriate for GHG accounting that could be applied at project to national scales (allowing outputs to be scaled up to a country level), to address the impacts of land use and land management change on soil carbon.
", "keywords": ["land use change", "Environmental Impact Assessment", "550", "ecosystem model", "Carbon Sequestration Science", "01 natural sciences", "7. Clean energy", "upland grassland", "soil", "stock change", "12. Responsible consumption", "11. Sustainability", "forest biomass", "Environmental assessment and monitoring", "soil carbon", "organic-matter", "agriculture", "0105 earth and related environmental sciences", "2. Zero hunger", "model", "Ecology", "land management", "assimilated carbon", "land use", "04 agricultural and veterinary sciences", "15. Life on land", "long-term experiments", "southern brazil", "monitoring", "high temporal resolution", "13. Climate action", "0401 agriculture", " forestry", " and fisheries", "biodiversity conservation", "environment", "Environmental Sciences"]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02689.x"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Global%20Change%20Biology", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02689.x", "name": "item", "description": "10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02689.x", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02689.x"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2012-04-09T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "2164/19500", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-04-17T16:25:38Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2022-05-31", "title": "Land\u2010based climate solutions for the United States", "description": "AbstractMeeting end\uffe2\uff80\uff90of\uffe2\uff80\uff90century global warming targets requires aggressive action on multiple fronts. Recent reports note the futility of addressing mitigation goals without fully engaging the agricultural sector, yet no available assessments combine both nature\uffe2\uff80\uff90based solutions (reforestation, grassland and wetland protection, and agricultural practice change) and cellulosic bioenergy for a single geographic region. Collectively, these solutions might offer a suite of climate, biodiversity, and other benefits greater than either alone. Nature\uffe2\uff80\uff90based solutions are largely constrained by the duration of carbon accrual in soils and forest biomass; each of these carbon pools will eventually saturate. Bioenergy solutions can last indefinitely but carry significant environmental risk if carelessly deployed. We detail a simplified scenario for the United States that illustrates the benefits of combining approaches. We assign a portion of non\uffe2\uff80\uff90forested former cropland to bioenergy sufficient to meet projected mid\uffe2\uff80\uff90century transportation needs, with the remainder assigned to nature\uffe2\uff80\uff90based solutions such as reforestation. Bottom\uffe2\uff80\uff90up mitigation potentials for the aggregate contributions of crop, grazing, forest, and bioenergy lands are assessed by including in a Monte Carlo model conservative ranges for cost\uffe2\uff80\uff90effective local mitigation capacities, together with ranges for (a) areal extents that avoid double counting and include realistic adoption rates and (b) the projected duration of different carbon sinks. The projected duration illustrates the net effect of eventually saturating soil carbon pools in the case of most strategies, and additionally saturating biomass carbon pools in the case of forest management. Results show a conservative end\uffe2\uff80\uff90of\uffe2\uff80\uff90century mitigation capacity of 110 (57\uffe2\uff80\uff93178) Gt CO2e for the U.S., ~50% higher than existing estimates that prioritize nature\uffe2\uff80\uff90based or bioenergy solutions separately. Further research is needed to shrink uncertainties, but there is sufficient confidence in the general magnitude and direction of a combined approach to plan for deployment now.