How to make land use policy decisions: Integrating science and economics to deliver connected climate, biodiversity, and food objectives.

Land use change is crucial to addressing the existential threats of climate change and biodiversity loss while enhancing food security [M. Zurek , , 1416-1421 (2022)]. The interconnected and spatially varying nature of the impacts of land use change means that these challenges must be addressed simultaneously [H.

Modelling the impact of forest management and CO-fertilisation on growth and demography in a Sitka spruce plantation.

Afforestation and reforestation to meet 'Net Zero' emissions targets are considered a necessary policy by many countries. Their potential benefits are usually assessed through forest carbon and growth models. The implementation of vegetation demography gives scope to represent forest management and other size-dependent processes within land surface models (LSMs).

The Montreal Protocol protects the terrestrial carbon sink.

The control of the production of ozone-depleting substances through the Montreal Protocol means that the stratospheric ozone layer is recovering and that consequent increases in harmful surface ultraviolet radiation are being avoided. The Montreal Protocol has co-benefits for climate change mitigation, because ozone-depleting substances are potent greenhouse gases. The avoided ultraviolet radiation and climate change also have co-benefits for plants and their capacity to store carbon through photosynthesis, but this has not previously been investigated.

Rainfall manipulation experiments as simulated by terrestrial biosphere models: Where do we stand?

Changes in rainfall amounts and patterns have been observed and are expected to continue in the near future with potentially significant ecological and societal consequences. Modelling vegetation responses to changes in rainfall is thus crucial to project water and carbon cycles in the future. In this study, we present the results of a new model-data intercomparison project, where we tested the ability of 10 terrestrial biosphere models to reproduce the observed sensitivity of ecosystem productivity to rainfall changes at 10 sites across the globe, in nine of which, rainfall exclusion and/or irrigation experiments had been performed.

Stomatal optimization based on xylem hydraulics (SOX) improves land surface model simulation of vegetation responses to climate.

Land surface models (LSMs) typically use empirical functions to represent vegetation responses to soil drought. These functions largely neglect recent advances in plant ecophysiology that link xylem hydraulic functioning with stomatal responses to climate. We developed an analytical stomatal optimization model based on xylem hydraulics (SOX) to predict plant responses to drought.

Surface-Atmosphere Coupling Scale, the Fate of Water, and Ecophysiological Function in a Brazilian Forest.

Tropical South America plays a central role in global climate. Bowen ratio teleconnects to circulation and precipitation processes far afield, and the global CO growth rate is strongly influenced by carbon cycle processes in South America. However, quantification of basin-wide seasonality of flux partitioning between latent and sensible heat, the response to anomalies around climatic norms, and understanding of the processes and mechanisms that control the carbon cycle remains elusive.

Decadal biomass increment in early secondary succession woody ecosystems is increased by CO enrichment.

Increasing atmospheric CO stimulates photosynthesis which can increase net primary production (NPP), but at longer timescales may not necessarily increase plant biomass. Here we analyse the four decade-long CO-enrichment experiments in woody ecosystems that measured total NPP and biomass. CO enrichment increased biomass increment by 1.

Land-use emissions play a critical role in land-based mitigation for Paris climate targets.

Scenarios that limit global warming to below 2 °C by 2100 assume significant land-use change to support large-scale carbon dioxide (CO) removal from the atmosphere by afforestation/reforestation, avoided deforestation, and Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). The more ambitious mitigation scenarios require even greater land area for mitigation and/or earlier adoption of CO removal strategies. Here we show that additional land-use change to meet a 1.

Large sensitivity in land carbon storage due to geographical and temporal variation in the thermal response of photosynthetic capacity.

Plant temperature responses vary geographically, reflecting thermally contrasting habitats and long-term species adaptations to their climate of origin. Plants also can acclimate to fast temporal changes in temperature regime to mitigate stress. Although plant photosynthetic responses are known to acclimate to temperature, many global models used to predict future vegetation and climate-carbon interactions do not include this process.

Land use change and El Niño-Southern Oscillation drive decadal carbon balance shifts in Southeast Asia.

An integrated understanding of the biogeochemical consequences of climate extremes and land use changes is needed to constrain land-surface feedbacks to atmospheric CO from associated climate change. Past assessments of the global carbon balance have shown particularly high uncertainty in Southeast Asia. Here, we use a combination of model ensembles to show that intensified land use change made Southeast Asia a strong source of CO from the 1980s to 1990s, whereas the region was close to carbon neutral in the 2000s due to an enhanced CO fertilization effect and absence of moderate-to-strong El Niño events.

Challenging terrestrial biosphere models with data from the long-term multifactor Prairie Heating and CO Enrichment experiment.

Multifactor experiments are often advocated as important for advancing terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs), yet to date, such models have only been tested against single-factor experiments. We applied 10 TBMs to the multifactor Prairie Heating and CO Enrichment (PHACE) experiment in Wyoming, USA. Our goals were to investigate how multifactor experiments can be used to constrain models and to identify a road map for model improvement.

Gross primary production responses to warming, elevated CO , and irrigation: quantifying the drivers of ecosystem physiology in a semiarid grassland.

Determining whether the terrestrial biosphere will be a source or sink of carbon (C) under a future climate of elevated CO (eCO ) and warming requires accurate quantification of gross primary production (GPP), the largest flux of C in the global C cycle. We evaluated 6 years (2007-2012) of flux-derived GPP data from the Prairie Heating and CO Enrichment (PHACE) experiment, situated in a grassland in Wyoming, USA. The GPP data were used to calibrate a light response model whose basic formulation has been successfully used in a variety of ecosystems.

Patterns of Use, Acute Subjective Experiences, and Motivations for Using Synthetic Cathinones ("Bath Salts") in Recreational Users.

Given the variety and potential toxicity of synthetic cathinones, clinicians and educators would benefit from information about patterns of and motivations for use, frequency of psychosocial consequences, and experience of acute subjective effects. We administered a comprehensive, web-based survey to 104 recreational users of synthetic cathinones. Sixty percent of respondents consumed synthetic cathinones once or more per month, usually snorting or swallowing these drugs, typically at home, usually with others, customarily during the evening and nighttime hours, and often in combination with another drug such as alcohol or marijuana.

Confronting model predictions of carbon fluxes with measurements of Amazon forests subjected to experimental drought.

Considerable uncertainty surrounds the fate of Amazon rainforests in response to climate change. Here, carbon (C) flux predictions of five terrestrial biosphere models (Community Land Model version 3.5 (CLM3.