Edited by:
Justin Baker, North Carolina State University, USA
Eric Davis, US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, USA
Alice Favero, Research Triangle Institute, USA
Brent Sohngen, Ohio State University, Columbus, USA
This Collection is now closed for submissions.
Collection Image credit: jimbophotoart / stock.adobe.com
This collection supports and amplifies research related SDG 13: Climate Action and SDG 15: Life on Land.
Integrating trees into agricultural landscapes can provide climate mitigation and improves soil fertility, biodiversity habitat, water quality, water flow, and human health, but these benefits must be achieved...
Achieving a net zero greenhouse gas United States (US) economy is likely to require both deep sectoral mitigation and additional carbon dioxide removals to offset hard-to-abate emissions. Enhancing the terrest...
Climate-smart agriculture can be used to build soil carbon stocks, decrease agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and increase agronomic resilience to climate pressures. The US recently declared its com...
Global climate change is one of the major challenges facing the world today, and forests play a crucial role as significant carbon sinks and providers of ecosystem services in mitigating climate change and pro...
Wood products continue to store carbon sequestered in forests after harvest and therefore play an important role in the total carbon storage associated with the forest sector. Trade-offs between carbon sequest...
U.S. agricultural producers are increasingly able to participate in private voluntary carbon initiatives that compensate their efforts to sequester CO2, reduce GHG emissions, and provide ecosystem services throug...
Two major factors that determine the efficiency of programs designed to mitigate greenhouse gases by encouraging voluntary changes in U.S. agricultural land management are the effect of land use changes on pro...
Land use and land cover changes have a significant impact on the dynamics of soil organic matter (SOM) and its fractions, as well as on overall soil health. This study conducted in Bharatpur Catchment, Chitwan...
This is an article collection published in Carbon Balance and Management.
Land-based mitigation options are crucial to achieve net-zero emissions. Conservation and changes in land use and land management practices can reduce net emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide from all sectors; increase the quantity of carbon stored in soils and above ground vegetation; and generate fuels that recycle carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Moreover, land-based mitigation is estimated to be cheap in comparison to energy sector abatement, and it provides other benefits to society like enhancing wildlife habitat, improving water quality, and lessening soil erosion.
To date, economic/ecological modeling and econometric analyses have informed policymakers about the optimal use of land to reduce emissions, the range of land-based mitigation actions, and their costs. For instance, the U.S. forest carbon sink sequesters 700-800 million tons of CO2 per year, which offsets about 10% of U.S. carbon emissions. At $50 per ton CO2, the U.S. has the potential to mitigate an additional 140 million tons of CO2 per year, while the potential globally is 3.2 billion tons CO2 per year. Moreover, as models include more inputs or become more spatially disaggregated, more insights on future scenarios can be developed and used to inform different stakeholders at the local, country, and global level.
This article collection will feature papers from a 2022 USDA Workshop, USDA Carbon Sinks Modeling Meeting, and three thematic summary articles. The articles will examine economic methods and address how those methods are applied to answer policy questions related to climate change mitigation in forests and agricultural soils. A range of different methods will be included in the article collection, including econometric and optimization approaches in economics. In particular, the approaches will highlight how ecosystems are represented in economic models and how the different approaches may influence the results.
In addition to considering these fundamental modeling questions, articles in the article collection will consider current policy questions that can be assessed now with the use of models (e.g. the carbon sequestration potential of subsidy programs, such as recent legislation in the United States, and impacts on land use and land management of the Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Agreement). It will also include articles that address important policy-related questions like additionality, permanence, and leakage, which are critical questions in the land-use space.
Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have carefully read the submission guidelines for Carbon Balance and Management. The complete manuscript should be submitted through the Carbon Balance and Management submission system. To ensure that you submit to the correct article collection please select the appropriate article collection in the drop-down menu upon submission. In addition, indicate within your cover letter that you wish your manuscript to be considered as part of the article collection 'Carbon mitigation potential in land: Lessons learned, present actions, and future priorities'. All submissions will undergo rigorous peer review and accepted articles will be published within the journal as a collection.