Going beyond carbon to understand biogeochemical and biophysical climate forcings of forested, agricultural, and residential land cover in a suburbanizing landscape

The scientific community has long recognized that the net climate impact of land use change involves important mechanisms beyond changes in carbon storage. However, research examining the combined biogeochemical and biogeophysical forcings associated with land use change has generally focused on conversions between forests and agricultural systems, with comparatively few considering transitions to developed land use. Previous studies have also typically utilized modeling or published values at regional to global scales, which may not be relevant to climate policy decision-making at the municipal scale. The goal of this study was to examine the net climate impacts of land use change driven by changes in C stocks, CO₂ fluxes, non-GHG emissions, and surface albedo in a mixed forested, residential, and agricultural landscape. We used a metric describing the climate regulating value of ecosystems to calculate the net climate impact of land use change from agricultural or forested land to developed land in a rapidly suburbanizing area surrounding Durham, New Hampshire, USA. To our knowledge, our study is unique in using local observational data to quantify land use-climate interactions that might inform local decision-making in ways that go beyond carbon sequestration to consider additional biogeochemical and biophysical tradeoffs. This understanding is important for developing more comprehensive climate mitigation strategies at local scales and across regions that include a mosaic of land use types.