NSF: Discovery .- New land use strategies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions .- Nuevas estrategias de uso de la tierra pueden reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=138170&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
Improved land use practices needed as strategies for lowering greenhouse gases

Automated chambers measure greenhouse gas levels in a young stand of wheat. Credit and Larger Version

April 7, 2016

The following is part 21 in a series on the National Science Foundation's Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. Visit parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20.

The most common strategies for lowering greenhouse gas emissions involve reducing the use of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil.

While these fossil fuels are the largest contributors of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, other sectors of the global economy can also contribute substantially to greenhouse gas emissions -- and efforts to reduce them.

A new analysis published this week in the journal Nature and led by soil and crop scientist Keith Paustian at Colorado State University (CSU) shows that changes in land-use practices can also help reduce levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

 

Land use: A key role

 

"No matter what approach we take to reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- whether it is the use of fossil fuels, changes in how we manage the production supply chain, or new innovations in agriculture -- land use plays a key role," Paustian said. "What needs to change is how we incentivize new land-use strategies for farmers, ranchers and producers."

One difficulty in using improved land-use practices as strategies for greenhouse gas reductions is that land use-related emissions, and how to best reduce them, come with more scientific uncertainty than approaches like fossil fuel replacement.

But emerging research and information technology developments offer promise in reducing these uncertainties, Paustian said, and for paving the way for policies that make use of the large greenhouse gas mitigation potential available through improved land use and management.

 

Land use, soils and ecosystem services

 

The answers may lie in soils.

"The beauty of soils is that they can be managed to provide ecosystem services often ignored," said paper co-author Phil Robertson of Michigan State University and the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site. "Managing soils to become 'climate-smart' builds both ecosystem resilience against climate change and an important underutilized capacity to mitigate that change."

Added Lou Kaplan, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology, which funds the Kellogg Biological Station LTER site, "These scientists highlight the role of basic research on soils in guiding strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture, and ultimately to assist greenhouse gas mitigation."

One example of such developments is an online tool designed to help farmers and ranchers understand how their practices affect their carbon footprints.

 

New tools and approaches

 

The web-based tool, called COMET-Farm (which stands for CarbOn Management and Evaluation Tool), was developed by CSU in partnership with USDA's Natural Resource Conservation Service to help producers estimate their greenhouse gas footprints, and to evaluate alternative management practices through data unique to each farming or ranching operation.

Paustian noted that these new approaches and new tools will not only allow for increased engagement by farmers and ranchers, but also offer a chance for industry to become more actively involved in land-use issues.

"Land use is as much as social issue as it is an environmental issue," Paustian said. "We need to develop the right policies and incentives for industry, and we need to do so by marshaling our scientific research and expertise."

Among other recommendations are generating more high-quality data about land use effects on greenhouse gas emissions, and greater engagement with land users through education and outreach.

The study's other authors include: Johannes Lehmann, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Cornell University; Stephen Ogle, CSU Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability; David Reay, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh; and Pete Smith, Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen.

--	Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734  cdybas@nsf.gov
--	Jason Kosovski, CSU (970) 491-2392  jason.kosovski@colostate.edu

Investigators Douglas Landis
Thomas Schmidt
Katherine Gross
Stephen Hamilton
G. Philip Robertson

Related Institutions/Organizations Michigan State University
Related Awards #1027253 The KBS LTER Project: Long-term Ecological Research in Row-crop Agriculture
Total Grants $6,540,767
Related WebsitesNSF Kellogg Biological Station LTER Site:
 http://lter.kbs.msu.edu/

Midwest corn fields offer surprising opportunities, scientists say, to mitigate greenhouse gases.
Credit and Larger Version

Carbon dioxide flux tower in a cropped field at the NSF Kellogg Biological Station LTER site.
Credit and Larger Version

Cover crops such as clover in a maturing wheat field can capture and store carbon dioxide in soil.
Credit and Larger Version

Scientists sample for new soil carbon storage in a Midwest field crop.
Credit and Larger Version

Researchers study soil carbon gains in reforested agricultural land.
Credit and Larger Versión
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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NASA : NASA Study Finds Carbon Emissions Could Dramatically Increase Risk of U.S. Megadroughts .- Estudio de la NASA Encuentra las emisiones de carbono podría aumentar dramáticamente el riesgo de megasequías estadounidenses

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., la Agencia Espacial NASA, nos informa que el aumento de las emisiones de carbono a la atmósfera, originará megasequias en los llanos estadounidenses, parece que recién están entendiendo que ellos son los primeros contaminantes del espacio, y justamente su propio territorio será víctima de esas emisiones del  Efecto Invernadero: Las sequías en los EE.UU. suroeste y llanos centrales durante la última mitad de este siglo podrían ser más seco y más largo que las condiciones de sequía se ven en esas regiones en los últimos 1.000 años, según un nuevo estudio de la NASA.

El estudio, publicado el jueves en la revista: the journal Science Advances, se basa en las proyecciones de varios modelos climáticos, incluyendo uno patrocinado por la NASA. Los que se encuentran el aumento continuado de investigación en las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero producidos por el hombre eleva el riesgo de sequías severas en estas regiones.

Youtube Override: 

NASA scientists used tree rings to understand past droughts and climate models incorporating soil moisture data to estimate future drought risk in the 21st century.

Image Credit: 

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Feature Link: 

Download this video in HD formats from Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio.

 

Droughts in the U.S. Southwest and Central Plains during the last half of this century could be drier and longer than drought conditions seen in those regions in the last 1,000 years, according to a new NASA study.

Youtube Override: 

Soil moisture 30 cm below ground projected through 2100 for two emissions scenarios. Brown is drier and blue is wetter than the 20th c. average. RCP 4.5 assumes reduced CO2 emissions. RCP 8.5 is "business as usual."

Image Credit: 

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Feature Link: 

 

Download this video in HD format from Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science Advances, is based on projections from several climate models, including one sponsored by NASA. The research found continued increases in human-produced greenhouse gas emissions drives up the risk of severe droughts in these regions.

Soil moisture 30 cm below ground projected through 2100 for high emissions scenario RCP 8.5. The soil moisture data are standardized to the Palmer Drought Severity Index and are deviations from the 20th century average.

Image Credit: 

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

 

"Natural droughts like the 1930s Dust Bowl and the current drought in the Southwest have historically lasted maybe a decade or a little less," said Ben Cook, climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York City, and lead author of the study. "What these results are saying is we're going to get a drought similar to those events, but it is probably going to last at least 30 to 35 years."

Soil moisture 30 cm below ground projected through 2100 for moderate emissions scenario RCP 4.5. The soil moisture data are standardized to the Palmer Drought Severity Index and are deviations from the 20th century average.

Image Credit: 

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

 

According to Cook, the current likelihood of a megadrought, a drought lasting more than three decades, is 12 percent. If greenhouse gas emissions stop increasing in the mid-21st century, Cook and his colleagues project the likelihood of megadrought to reach more than 60 percent.

However, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase along current trajectories throughout the 21st century, there is an 80 percent likelihood of a decades-long megadrought in the Southwest and Central Plains between the years 2050 and 2099.

The scientists analyzed a drought severity index and two soil moisture data sets from 17 climate models that were run for both emissions scenarios. The high emissions scenario projects the equivalent of an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of 1,370 parts per million (ppm) by 2100, while the moderate emissions scenario projects the equivalent of 650 ppm by 2100. Currently, the atmosphere contains 400 ppm of CO2.

In the Southwest, climate change would likely cause reduced rainfall and increased temperatures that will evaporate more water from the soil. In the Central Plains, drying would largely be caused by the same temperature-driven increase in evaporation.

The Fifth Assessment Report, issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013, synthesized the available scientific studies and reported that increases in evaporation over arid lands are likely throughout the 21st century. But the IPCC report had low confidence in projected changes to soil moisture, one of the main indicators of drought.

Until this study, much of the previous research included analysis of only one drought indicator and results from fewer climate models, Cook said, making this a more robust drought projection than any previously published.

"What I think really stands out in the paper is the consistency between different metrics of soil moisture and the findings across all the different climate models," said Kevin Anchukaitis, a climate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study. "It is rare to see all signs pointing so unwaveringly toward the same result, in this case a highly elevated risk of future megadroughts in the United States."

This study also is the first to compare future drought projections directly to drought records from the last 1,000 years.

"We can't really understand the full variability and the full dynamics of drought over western North America by focusing only on the last century or so," Cook said. "We have to go to the paleoclimate record, looking at these much longer timescales, when much more extreme and extensive drought events happened, to really come up with an appreciation for the full potential drought dynamics in the system."

Modern measurements of drought indicators go back about 150 years. Cook and his colleagues used a well-established tree-ring database to study older droughts. Centuries-old trees allow a look back into the distant past. Tree species like oak and bristle cone pines grow more in wet years, leaving wider rings, and vice versa for drought years. By comparing the modern drought measurements to tree rings in the 20th century for a baseline, the tree rings can be used to establish moisture conditions over the past 1,000 years.

The scientists were interested in megadroughts that took place between 1100 and 1300 in North America. These medieval-period droughts, on a year-to-year basis, were no worse than droughts seen in the recent past. But they lasted, in some cases, 30 to 50 years.

When these past megadroughts are compared side-by-side with computer model projections of the 21st century, both the moderate and business-as-usual emissions scenarios are drier, and the risk of droughts lasting 30 years or longer increases significantly.

Connecting the past, present and future in this way shows that 21st century droughts in the region are likely to be even worse than those seen in medieval times, according to Anchukaitis.

"Those droughts had profound ramifications for societies living in North America at the time. These findings require us to think about how we would adapt if even more severe droughts lasting over a decade were to occur in our future," Anchukaitis said.

NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.

For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit:

 

http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

 

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

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