Research

Three quarters of the ice-free land area is managed by humans. This has serious consequences for the climate: the local climate can be changed by several degrees Celsius just by the way land is managed, and every year around 6 billion tons of CO₂ are emitted through land use changes, especially through tropical deforestation. The pressure on land will continue to increase as, on the one hand, growing population and prosperity increase the demand for food and fiber, and on the other hand, as many of the scenarios compatible with the Paris Agreement goals require massive deployment of land-based carbon dioxide removal, e.g. through afforestation or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

The aim of our research is to deepen our understanding of how land use activities have contributed to climate change and their potential to help communities adapt to climate change and mitigate global warming. We particularly focus on taking a comprehensive look at the local, regional and global levels, ideally finding win-win situations for both local and global climate effects. Likewise, we focus on providing a comprehensive view of relevant processes by considering the impact of land use activities on greenhouse gases together with the biogeophysical effects (changes in momentum, water and energy fluxes); mostly only the greenhouse gas budget is considered by policy actors so far. We study different types of land use and land management, often in comparative form, including in particular deforestation, reforestation, degradation, forest management, BECCS and irrigation. Our main tools are different types of vegetation and climate models integrated with Earth observation data.