OpenCLIM_LANDS: Open Evaluation of Climate-resilient Interventions for Land Management, Soil Health and Net Zero

OpenCLIM-LANDS will provide decision makers with the insights urgently needed to put the UK on a path to deliver net zero emissions by 2050, while also delivering climate resilient soil health, food security, and biodiversity net-gain. We will identify spatially explicit intervention scenarios for land uses that exploit synergies between climate mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity. We will create a validated, UK-wide, spatially explicit integrated modelling framework, OpenCLIM-LANDS, to evaluate potential net zero pathways. OpenCLIM-LANDS quantifies the implications of land interventions on soil carbon and health, biodiversity, agriculture, and flood risk, while exploring the synergies and trade-offs between interventions. Close stakeholder engagement will provide the opportunity for governments, agencies, and NGOs to engage with farming groups and academics to develop win-win net zero solutions. Our project has extensive stakeholder alignment through its partners and project networks with DEFRA, DESNZ, CCC, JNCC, EA, Nature Scotland, DAERA, land managers, farming groups, the Soil Association Exchange and the ELM Network+.

OpenCLIM-LANDS builds on the existing spatially explicit modelling framework, OpenCLIM, developed under previous UKRI funding. OpenCLIM is capable of simulating climate change risks to agriculture, flooding risk and biodiversity, including the influence of alternative land use intervention scenarios, but was not designed to specifically look at net-zero pathways. While a wealth of observational data exists for UK biodiversity, flooding risk and crop yields, there is a lack of empirical data on soil carbon storage and soil health. To extend the capability of OpenCLIM we will parameterise, and ground truth soil carbon and soil health using empirical data, develop and validate a novel framework for soil carbon and soil health evaluation, and develop and trial robotic monitoring for measuring and verifying soil carbon and health. Data relating to soil carbon and long-term carbon storage potential will feed into OpenCLIM-LANDS to give real world grounding to its carbon-evaluation, while soil microbiome data, as a qualifier of soil health will be reconciled with OpenCLIM's projections for the terrestrial biosphere. We will also clarify linkages between soil carbon resources and their regulation of soil health.

Alternative scenarios of land use and management interventions have different implications for biodiversity conservation, will sequester different amounts of carbon, and result in up/down regulation of soil health. These dissimilar carbon resources will select for different soil biological assemblages and therefore soil health under contrasting intervention regimes. The habitats in which the interventions are applied will also affect the potential for carbon drawdown and biodiversity outcomes. When considered at scale, scenarios of interventions will result in spatial gradients of sequestered carbon, soil health and biodiversity outcomes. Similarly, the climate resilience of these carbon and biodiversity landscape assets will also differ.

We will explore multiple scenarios of land use interventions linked to landscape recovery and GGR interventions. The project will culminate in the identification of new, spatially explicit, intervention scenarios for land use interventions exploiting synergies and minimising trade-offs. Through our extensive farmer/stakeholder network we will engage in two-way exchange with the practitioners who will ultimately deliver a net zero landscape. We will listen to their voice, respond to it, and share our research and decision support tools with them.

Technical Summary

OpenCLIM-LANDS will characterise plausible pathways to net zero on UK land (LUNZ) by 2050, based on a database of proposed land use/management interventions identified by stakeholders. It builds on OpenCLIM (OC), funded by UKRI to inform the fourth climate change risk assessment (CCRA4). OC allows projection of spatially explicit future climate risks to agriculture and biodiversity, and exposure to drought and flooding. OC models will be adapted to investigate LUNZ interventions. We will enhance and calibrate a revised Roth-C model to quantify the dynamic effects of land-based interventions and climate change on carbon storage.

Field research will measure soil carbon and soil health under the proposed interventions to calibrate Roth-C, using soil monitoring data to simulate the effects of land-based interventions that leverage greenhouse gas removal (GGR) at scale. We will empirically evaluate effects of interventions on soil carbon and health in collaboration with partners who have secured DEFRA Landscape Recovery, ELMs Test and Trial, and Countryside Stewardship Facilitation funding and have intervention regimes entrained (e.g., woodland regeneration).

OpenCLIM-LANDS will integrate cutting-edge approaches to quantify future soil organic carbon storage under climate change, marking a step change in soil carbon permanence prognoses. By creating a spatial representation of future patterns of crops and land uses at field-scale, we will simulate implications of land use interventions for carbon storage, above/below ground biodiversity, soil health, agricultural systems, and flood risk. We will explore how to deliver net zero emissions by 2050, whilst maximising climate resilient soil health, food security, and biodiversity net-gain. We will create high-resolution LUNZ scenarios considering effects of dietary shifts and technological innovation as well as land use change, including at least one optimised scenario maximising benefits for a range of policy goals.