Almut Arneth, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Almut Arneth
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
I am professor at KIT, working mostly on regional to global scale modelling of the interactions between climate change, land-use change, and various terrestrial ecosystem properties, using Dynamic Global Vegetation models (LPJ-GUESS; stand-alone and coupled to the LandSyMM coupled model). I have been a Coordinating Lead Author in the Global Assessment of the IPBES, Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on land and climate change and a Lead Author in the IPCC 6th Assessment report. Currently I am acting as a Lead Author in the IPBES Nexus Assessment. I have been involved for many years in a number of European and nationally-funded projects related to Global Environmental Change, including being the co-coordinator of the project wildE (Climate-smart rewilding: ecological restoration for climate change mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity support in Europe). In 2022 I was one of the recipients of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Price awarded by the DFG.


https://lemg.imk-ifu.kit.edu/
Abstract:

Carbon emissions and uptake from land use and land cover changes – uncertainties and implications for the land carbon sink
A. ARNETH
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Department Atmospheric Environmental Research, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Historical emissions of CO 2 from land conversions and management intensity remain the largest source of uncertainty in the global carbon budget. Within- and between model uncertainty, different land-cover and land-use change reconstructions and lack of process-representations all contribute to the lack of clarity regarding past emissions. In the presentation I will highlight some examples, focussing on three aspects:

  1. The net carbon emission estimates from human-induced land cover changes need to capture a complex interplay between gross emissions and uptake (e.g., emissions from deforestation vs uptake from reforestation);
  2. Likewise, the land carbon sink in response to climate change is a complex interplay between gross sinks and sources (e.g., CO 2 fertilisation vs mortality due to weather extremes);
  3. Management intensity can be as important as land cover change and is typically not included when modelling carbon emissions or uptake.
All of these vary greatly between regions and differ in time. I will present some illustrative examples and discuss -given the carbon budget’s ‘budget approach’- the implications the lack of understanding of the land-use change related net sources has for our estimates of the net carbon sink on land.
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