The climatic impacts of land surface change and carbon management, and the implications for climate-change mitigation policy

Abstract

Strategies to mitigate anthropogenic climate change recognize that carbon sequestration in the terrestrial biosphere can reduce the build-up of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. However, climate mitigation policies do not generally incorporate the effects of these changes in the land surface on the surface albedo, the fluxes of sensible and latent heat to the atmosphere, and the distribution of energy within the climate system. Changes in these components of the surface energy budget can affect the local, regional, and global climate. Given the goal of mitigating climate change, it is important to consider all of the effects of changes in terrestrial vegetation and to work toward a better understanding of the full climate system. Acknowledging the importance of land surface change as a component of climate change makes it more challenging to create a system of credits and debits wherein emission or sequestration of carbon in the biosphere is equated with emission of carbon from fossil fuels. Recognition of the complexity of human-caused changes in climate does not, however, weaken the importance of actions that would seek to minimize our disturbance of the Earth's environmental system and that would reduce societal and ecological vulnerability to environmental change and variability.

Land use and land cover tools for climate adaptation

“…The biological systems responds to a combination of local climatic conditions and land surface conditions (e.g., the amount and spatial configuration of habitat). Managers can identify LULC interventions that modify both local climate conditions and land surfaces conditions that help the biological system achieve conservation goals LULC activities extend the discussion about climate change drivers beyond greenhouse gas emissions and recognize the capacity of LULC activities to ameliorate or exacerbate climate change (Marland et al 2003). The meteorological community provides exhaustive treatments of the physics underlying LULC activities (e.g., Oke 1987), and recent ecological research has convincingly demonstrated its relevance to biological processes.…”

“…However, these processes play a significant role in determining climate at local, regional, and global scales (Brovkin et al 1999;Kalnay and Cai 2003;Matthews et al 2003;Myhre and Myhre 2003) and, consequently, the effectiveness of climate policy (Marland et al 2003). Recent studies demonstrate that LULC activities have ecologically-important impacts on biophysical conditions such as soil moisture availability (Li et al 2000), length of growing season (White et al 2002), diurnal temperature range (Stone and Weaver 2003;Balling and Cerveny 2003), temperature extremes (Shine et al 2002;Marshall et al 2003), precipitation patterns (Changnon 2003), and severe storm frequency (Rozoff et al 2003) (Table 1).…”

Greenhouse Gas Policy Influences Climate via Direct Effects of Land-Use Change

“…Climate change mitigation activities to date, however, have focused almost exclusively on the greenhouse gas consequences of land-use change (Marland et al, 2003). None of the proposed regulations or programs, including the UN Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation This differentiation in how climate effects of land-use change are treated is also evident in the largest global effort to simulate potential changes in future climate, the Climate Model Intercomparison Project, now in its 5 th incarnation (CMIP5).…”

Evaluation of 4 years of continuous <i>δ</i><sup>13</sup>C(CO<sub>2</sub>) data using a moving Keeling plot method

“…For this purpose it is necessary to distinguish between CO 2 contributions from oceanic, biospheric and anthropogenic sources and sinks. Monitoring these CO 2 contributions separately is desirable to improve process understanding, to investigate climatic feedbacks on the carbon cycle and also to verify emission reductions and design CO 2 mitigation strategies (Marland et al, 2003;Gurney et al, 2009;Ballantyne et al, 2010).…”