Led by: Mark Rounsevell, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
The aim of WP1 is to identify policy-relevant land-based mitigation options and the associated benefits or disadvantages across a range of different scenarios and models, considering also uncertainties, in order to:
- inform various options for better policy design from an analysis of past case studies of land-use and climate mitigation policy and stakeholder experiences, taking into account the alternative perceptions of the issues at stake;
- assess the potential effects of current and anticipated future land-use and mitigation policy on the climate system;
- provide tools and knowledge to support best practice in policy implementation by synthesising the lessons learned from past and current land-use and climate mitigation policy.
Led by: Peter Verburg, IVM-VU, Netherlands
WP2 assesses the processes underlying land-use and land-cover change and their interplay with the climate. Specifically, the WP aims to:
- provide a quantitative and comparative analysis of how existing, published land-use data and land-use classification systems are capable of addressing chief questions on land use-climate interactions;
- analyze the processes that lead to land-system change (changes in land cover, land management and livestock systems) and advance approaches for simulation, while improving the capacity of land-system models to address societal and climate feedbacks through adaptive behaviour and mitigation;
- analyze the land-use impacts of alternative mitigation and adaptation options (including policies) within different contexts addressing indirect land-change effects, aiming to provide insight into the underlying mechanisms that lead to such unanticipated effects and feedbacks.
Led by: Stephen Sitch, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
WP3 investigates the response of ecosystem processes to interacting changes in climate, atmospheric composition and land use and cover (LUC). It also aims to disentangle management and environmental effects on the net land-use change flux. The objectives are broadly three-fold:
- to contribute to the development of an approach to homogenize the way land-use datasets are implemented in dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) and earth system models (ESMs), to ensure their land-surface representations account for the most important variables of LUC datasets;
- to improve LUC-relevant DGVM representation of processes in soils and vegetation, and hence to contribute to advanced land-surface representations in ESMs;
- to provide historical and future assessments of the effect of LUC on global and regional trends in key ecosystem services linked to carbon and nutrient cycles, food production, habitat diversity and water availability. Also, to provide a present-day global carbon budget and to attribute the net LU flux into management and environmental effects.
Led by: Nathalie de Noblet-Ducoudré, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et del'Environnement CNRS-LSCE, France
WP4 aims to quantify the net global climate impacts of past and future land-use and land-cover changes (LUC). Our objectives are three-fold:
- to identify and quantify the temporal and spatial impacts (on climate) of both biogeophysical (bph) and biogeochemical (bgc) processes triggered by LUC;
- to calculate the resulting net climate impact of historical and future (according to RCP CMIP5 scenarios, and select LUC4C projections) LUC, and compare to climate impacts resulting from changes in all other forcings (anthropogenic and natural);
- to develop specific diagnostics (metrics) for such analysis of both impacts, and make our tools sufficiently generic to be applicable to other ESMs and to be useful to Integrated Assessment Models.
Led by: Alessandro Cescatti, Joint Research Centre JRC – European Commission, Belgium
The overall WP5 objective is to foster model-data integration and provide a comprehensive evaluation of the performance and uncertainty of the LUC4C modelling framework, by:
- Assessing the performance and the structural uncertainty of LUC models at regional and global scale;
- Evaluating against surface and satellite observations the performance of DGVMs and ESMs in the quantification of the bph and bgc climate impacts of alternative land covers;
- Quantifying and attributing the uncertainty of DGVMs and ESMs in the prediction of the net climate effect of LULCC.
Led by: Elke Stehfest, Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Milieu PBL, Netherlands and Alexander Popp, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany
WP6 aims to provide scenario-based analysis of a range of policy options for climate change mitigation. The WP also aims to provide a cross-LUC4C synthesis. Results are transferred into a LUC4C knowledge platform and toolkit (LUC4kit) which will be made available to stakeholders. Chief goals are to:
- define and establish scenarios which serve as a framework for detailed investigations of land-use-based mitigation options;
- identify and measure trade-offs of land based mitigation options with other sustainability goals;
- test novel metrics, combining climate impacts of bgc and bph processes;
- develop LUC4kit as a web-based outreach platform for stakeholders.
Led by: Lucia Perugini, Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici CMCC, Italy
Based on the latest available scientific knowledge (from the literature and from other WPs), this WP aims to develop a methodological guidance for estimating the bph effects of specific land-use and land-cover changes. This guidance will be structured so as to be integrated in the existing IPCC guidelines that have already been extensively used by the parties to the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol to estimate GHG emissions and removals, with the aim to allow countries to estimate and report the net climate effects of LULCCs, i.e. including bph and bgc effects. Specifically, we aim to:
- develop an IPCC-like methodological guidance to allow the integration of biophysical effects of LULCC with the estimates of GHG emissions and removals;
- further life-cycle assessment (LCA) land-use characterization modelling, with respect to biogeochemical and biophysical impact, and including development of criteria for iLUC, in order to advance monitoring of the effects on GHG balance of the EU biofuel policies.
Led by: Almut Arneth, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT, Germany
Work Package 8 supports LUC4C to achieve its overall goals, by establishing and maintaining a set of transparent and coherent management structures and practices for the consortium. It facilitates integration across partners and WPs, and ensures that deliverables are produced in a timely manner. In close collaboration with WP1, WP 8 activities disseminates the project results to policy and academic stakeholders, and to the wider public. In particular, the WP:
- is responsible for effective and transparent information flow between the LUC4C researchers, the Scientific Advisory Group, and the European Commission;
- coordinates the composition of the Consortium Agreement and the project’s regular scientific and financial reporting activities;
- promotes integration between WPs and flexible revision and adaptation of the project;
- provides overall coordination and management to achieve project objectives on time, to cost and at a high quality level;
- aims to establish and maintain high quality dissemination materials and platforms, and organise outreach activities.
