Measuring the success of climate change adaptation and mitigation in terrestrial ecosystems

Abstract

Natural and seminatural ecosystems must be at the forefront of efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In the urgency of current circumstances, ecosystem restoration represents a range of available, efficient, and effective solutions to cut net greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. Although mitigation success can be measured by monitoring changing fluxes of greenhouse gases, adaptation is more complicated to measure, and reductions in a wide range of risks for biodiversity and people must be evaluated. Progress has been made in the monitoring and evaluation of adaptation and mitigation measures, but more emphasis on testing the effectiveness of proposed strategies is necessary. It is essential to take an integrated view of mitigation, adaptation, biodiversity, and the needs of people, to realize potential synergies and avoid conflict between different objectives.

Global recognition of the importance of nature-based solutions to the impacts of climate change

“…Evidence of forest dieback across the globe as a result of climate stress (in particular drought and the increased frequency of pests and wildfires) (Allen et al, 2010) suggests that afforestation might not be a viable longterm adaptation solution in some regions. Instead, scientific research increasingly suggests that areas allowed to regenerate naturally can deliver a wider range of climate change adaptation services with fewer trade-offs (Brancalion & Chazdon, 2017;Morecroft et al, 2019) and be more cost-effective than afforestation (Crouzeilles et al, 2020). For example, although large-scale afforestation projects have reduced soil erosion in China (e.g., Liu et al, 2008;Ouyang et al, 2016; but see Cao, 2008), the plantations have higher rates of evapotranspiration compared to natural vegetation (Cao et al, 2016).…”

With Power Comes Responsibility – A Rangelands Perspective on Forest Landscape Restoration

“…Restoration of natural and semi-natural terrestrial ecosystems has important potential to deliver climate change mitigation and other ecosystem services (Morecroft et al, 2019). Restoring savannas and grasslands improves carbon storage in soils, protects water resources, and reduces the risk of catastrophic fires (Archibald et al, 2013;Buisson et al, 2019;Morecroft et al, 2019;Wigley et al, 2020).…”

“…Currently used definitions of "forest" allow plantations to be included as forest restoration , and available data on country pledges show that nearly half the land pledged for FLR is in fact earmarked for plantations, in most cases with fast-growing exotic species (Lewis et al, 2019). Commercial forestry plantations typically provide a fraction of the ecosystem services of the natural vegetation they replace (Crouzeilles et al, 2017;Lewis et al, 2019) and they can negatively impact on local livelihoods when they target and appropriate land used by local people for food production (Fairhead et al, 2012;Morecroft et al, 2019).…”

Human Activities Enhance Radiation Forcing through Surface Albedo Associated with Vegetation in Beijing

“…Considering human activity (or interference to the ecosystems) and vegetation resilience together, we reclassified the land cover data from two periods, 2000 and 2015. The study first divided the two periods of land cover data into three types: urban areas, cropland, and other land types (dominated by natural and seminatural vegetation, such as grassland, forest, and wetland) [44]. Then, we used the raster overlay method to convert the two land cover layers to five new land cover types ( Figure 2), namely old urban areas (OU, which means that the land had remained urban areas from 2000 to 2015.…”