Climate warming from managed grasslands cancels the cooling effect of carbon sinks in sparsely grazed and natural grasslands

Chang, Jinfeng; Ciais, Philippe; Gasser, Thomas; Smith, Pete; Herrero, Mario; Havlík, Petr; Obersteiner, Michael; Guenet, Bertrand; Goll, Daniel S.; Li, Wei; Naipal, Victoria; Peng, Shushi; Qiu, Chunjing; Tian, Hanqin; Viovy, Nicolas; Ye, Chao; Zhu, Dan

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20406-7

Cited by 150 publications

(105 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…For this study, intact forest areas (that are unmanaged, by definition) from Potapov et al (2017) and lightly grazed grassland areas from Chang et al (2021a) were removed from the N2O totals in proportion to their presence in each inversion grid box.…”

Section: Processing Of N2o Inversions For Comparison With Inventoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing national greenhouse gas budgets reported in UNFCCC inventories against atmospheric inversions

Deng

Ciais

Tzompa-Sosa

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. In support of the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement on Climate change, this study presents a comprehensive framework to process the results of atmospheric inversions in order to make them suitable for evaluating UNFCCC national inventories of land-use carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and removals, corresponding to the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry and waste sectors. We also deduced anthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions regrouped into fossil and agriculture and waste emissions, and anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from inversions. To compare inversions with national reports, we compiled a new global harmonized database of national emissions and removals from periodical UNFCCC inventories by Annex I countries, and from sporadic and less detailed emissions reports by Non-Annex I countries, given by National Communications and Biennial Update Reports. The method to reconcile inversions with inventories is applied to selected large countries covering 78 % of the global land carbon uptake for CO2, as well as emissions and removals in the land use, land use change and forestry sector, and top-emitters of CH4 and N2O. Our method uses results from an ensemble of global inversions produced by the Global Carbon Project for the three greenhouse gases, with ancillary data. We examine the role of CO2 fluxes caused by lateral transfer processes from rivers and from trade in crop and wood products, and the role of carbon uptake in unmanaged lands, both not accounted for by the rules of inventories. Here we show that, despite a large spread across the inversions, the median of available inversion models points to a larger terrestrial carbon sink than inventories over temperate countries or groups of countries of the Northern Hemisphere like Russia, Canada and the European Union. For CH4, we find good consistency between the inversions assimilating only data from the global in-situ network and those using satellite CH4 retrievals, and a tendency for inversions to diagnose higher CH4 emissions estimates than reported by inventories. In particular, oil and gas extracting countries in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf region tend to systematically report lower emissions compared to those estimated by inversions. For N2O, inversions tend to produce higher anthropogenic emissions than inventories for tropical countries, even when attempting to consider only managed land emissions. In the inventories of many non-Annex I countries, this can be tentatively attributed to either a lack of reporting indirect N2O emissions from atmospheric deposition and from leaching to rivers, or to the existence of natural sources intertwined with managed lands, or to an under-estimation of N2O emission factors for direct agricultural soil emissions. The advantage of inversions is that they provide insights on seasonal and interannual greenhouse gas fluxes anomalies, e.g. during extreme events such as drought or abnormal fire episodes, whereas inventory methods are established to estimate trends and multi-annual changes. As a much denser sampling of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations by different satellites coordinated into a global constellation is expected in the coming years, the methodology proposed here to compare inversion results with inventory reports could be applied regularly for monitoring the effectiveness of mitigation policy and progress by countries to meet the objective of their pledges.

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Section: Processing Of N2o Inversions For Comparison With Inventoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing national greenhouse gas budgets reported in UNFCCC inventories against atmospheric inversions

Deng

Ciais

Tzompa-Sosa

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…[117,118]). Lightly grazed and natural grasslands have recently been identified as large CO 2 sinks in response to rising temperatures, carbon-dioxide fertilization and nitrogen deposition [119], and changes in the management of current pasturelands have well-documented if modest potential to enhance soil carbon stocks in many locations [120][121][122]. Climate change will also require adaptation of land management practices, and it will be important to integrate mitigation and adaptation strategies [106].…”

Section: Integrating Methane Mitigation Into a Broader Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

How necessary and feasible are reductions of methane emissions from livestock to support stringent temperature goals?

Reisinger

Clark²,

Cowie

et al. 2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Agriculture is the largest single source of global anthropogenic methane (CH 4 ) emissions, with ruminants the dominant contributor. Livestock CH 4 emissions are projected to grow another 30% by 2050 under current policies, yet few countries have set targets or are implementing policies to reduce emissions in absolute terms. The reason for this limited ambition may be linked not only to the underpinning role of livestock for nutrition and livelihoods in many countries but also diverging perspectives on the importance of mitigating these emissions, given the short atmospheric lifetime of CH 4 . Here, we show that in mitigation pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C, which include cost-effective reductions from all emission sources, the contribution of future livestock CH 4 emissions to global warming in 2050 is about one-third of that from future net carbon dioxide emissions. Future livestock CH 4 emissions, therefore, significantly constrain the remaining carbon budget and the ability to meet stringent temperature limits. We review options to address livestock CH 4 emissions through more efficient production, technological advances and demand-side changes, and their interactions with land-based carbon sequestration. We conclude that bringing livestock into mainstream mitigation policies, while recognizing their unique social, cultural and economic roles, would make an important contribution towards reaching the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement and is vital for a limit of 1.5°C. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Rising methane: is warming feeding warming? (part 1)'.

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“…Grasslands cover about 40% of the earth's surface, providing a large number of ecosystem services (1,2). However, the intensification of land use has resulted in a worldwide degradation of species-rich forage grasslands (3,4). Recent studies have shown that inoculation with soil from a late successional stage can facilitate the establishment and growth of late-successional plant species and suppress early successional plant species at ruderal or degraded sites (5 -9).…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Grasslands cover about 40% of the earth's surface, providing a large number of ecosystem services [1,2]. However, the intensification of land use has resulted in a worldwide degradation of species-rich forage grasslands and undermined their ability to support biodiversity and ecosystem functioning [3][4][5]. Recent studies have shown that inoculation with soil from a late successional stage can alter soil microbial communities and facilitate the establishment and growth of late-successional plant species [6][7][8][9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil inoculum identity and rate jointly steer microbiomes and plant communities in the field

Han

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Inoculation with soil from distinctly different ecosystems has been reported to induce directional changes in the plant and soil communities, however, a major question is how specific these inoculations are and whether different inocula collected from a similar ecosystem will also lead to differential ecosystem development at the recipient site. We conducted a soil inoculation field experiment at a degraded grassland with two different soil inocula both from grasslands and used three inoculation depths. We then measured the development of plant and soil communities over a period of three years following soil inoculation. Our results show that soil and plant communities diverged and that these effects were stronger with increasing inoculation amount. Inoculation with upland meadow soil at the recipient site resulted in more complex biotic networks than inoculation with meadow steppe soil. Our experiment highlights that soil inoculation can promote restoration of degraded ecosystems but that the direction and speed of ecosystem development depend on the origin of the inoculum and the amount of inoculum used.

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Climate warming from managed grasslands cancels the cooling effect of carbon sinks in sparsely grazed and natural grasslands

Cited by 150 publications

References 74 publications

Comparing national greenhouse gas budgets reported in UNFCCC inventories against atmospheric inversions

Comparing national greenhouse gas budgets reported in UNFCCC inventories against atmospheric inversions

How necessary and feasible are reductions of methane emissions from livestock to support stringent temperature goals?

Soil inoculum identity and rate jointly steer microbiomes and plant communities in the field

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