LAMACLIMA: LAnd MAnagement for CLImate Mitigation and Adaptation

The LAMACLIMA project (LAnd MAnagement for CLImate Mitigation and Adaptation) aims to investigate how changes in land cover and land management (LCLM) can help to meet the mitigation and adaptation objectives of the Paris Agreement, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals.

Changes in LCLM have a considerable effect on the global climate through the release of carbon in the atmosphere (biogeochemical effects), and the change of local energy and water fluxes at the land surface and their interaction with large-scale atmospheric dynamics (biogeophysical effects). Therefore, it is very relevant for future climate mitigation and adaptation efforts to investigate the overall LCLM-climate effects and their interactions with the climate system.

The project will investigate the local and remote biogeophysical and biogeochemical effects of three key changes in LCLM on climate:

• re/afforestation,
• irrigation,
• wood harvest

and their implications for the sectors:

• agriculture,
• water availability,
• biodiversity,
• economic productivity

as well as the resulting economic impacts.

The need to integrate more land management practices into vegetation and climate models has been established among others by a suite of papers resulting from the ISSI project "Integrating Earth Observation data and the description of land management": They established that land management has effects on surface climate of similar magnitude as land cover changes (Luyssaert et al. 2014), reviewed data availability (Erb et al. 2016) and identified challenges and opportunities for the integration of land management in models (Pongratz et al 2018).