Keeping Soils Climate Mitigation Potential Grounded for US Agriculture
Abstract
The U.S. agriculture sector must substantially reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to limit atmospheric warming to achieve the Paris Agreement target. Agricultural soils can sequester carbon and reduce GHG emissions but controversy exists on what levels of adoption are possible and to what extent they may mitigate emissions. In this paper, we provide a framework for identifying current levels of conservation practice adoption and two scenarios for setting reasonable, short-term conservation practice adoption targets by production region. Based on existing (2017) survey data, we estimate that 1,342 M tonnes CO2e have been reduced through the adoption of seven management practices on 133.5 Mha of cropland. Projecting current adoption rates over the next 10 y (i.e., status quo), 53.9 Mha of adoption could result in 486 M tonnes of new CO2e reduction potential. Under accelerated growth rate scenario, an additional conversion of 110.1 Mha could result in 1,185 M tonnes of CO2e. All three estimates include only the mitigation potential realized during the first 10 y of practice adoption and continued mitigation is expected but will likely be reduced in subsequent years as C sequestration saturates. Estimating CO2e reduction potentials based on existing practice adoption data (2012 and 2017) at the resource region level, and their shifts in adoption highlights three key outcomes in this work: 1) agriculture has had a substantial impact on GHG mitigation through existing/historical adoption of seven cropland management practices and conversion of lands to the Conservation Reserve Program; 2) these shifts in adoption provide an important baseline to make future projections of regionally-defined shifts in practice adoption and GHG mitigation potentials; and 3) disaggregating national estimates to the resource region level can help inform and prioritize programming and policies.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFM.U41C..05M