Policy | US Nature4Climate

Carbon Captured by Coastal & Ocean Habitats Can Advance States’ Climate Goals: Experts discuss growing ‘blue carbon’ data and resources, and their potential role in policy

Coastal wetlands support a huge range of life on Earth and provide the major benefit of capturing and storing carbon—so-called “blue carbon.” Conserving and restoring these ecosystems can contribute to broader efforts that combat climate change.

Because states in the U.S. largely set the policies governing their coastlines, they have opportunities to prominently incorporate blue carbon into their climate policies and goals. And because officials increasingly realize the role quality data plays in determining how much blue carbon is contained in their coastal habitats, including salt marshes, forested tidal wetlands, mangroves, and seagrass beds, The Pew Charitable Trusts recently hosted a webinar that brought together experts from two organizations focused on collecting blue carbon data and making it readily available.

The discussion with representatives of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and the Pacific Northwest Blue Carbon Working Group (PNW Blue Carbon Working Group) detailed information and tools that can help states better understand their blue carbon resources and how officials can enhance and improve their states’ data.

Recognizing the role that blue carbon can play in advancing climate goals, Pew began working on the issue in 2018, engaging with agencies, researchers, and stakeholders in multiple countries and states. Jennifer Browning, director of Pew’s Conserving Marine Life in the U.S. project, told the webinar’s attendees, “As states continue to integrate blue carbon into state climate strategies over the coming year, we see an opportunity to help states come together to address common issues and challenges around developing blue carbon inventories, setting goals, and developing management strategies.”

Browning specifically noted work underway in three states: Oregon, which is the first state to incorporate blue carbon in a proposed carbon sequestration and storage goal; California, which also is enacting policies to incorporate blue carbon into management of its natural and working lands; and North Carolina, which is accounting for the carbon sequestration and storage ability of its seagrass habitats, the first state to do so.

Browning also announced that this webinar is part of a forum Pew is building for states interested in incorporating coastal blue carbon into their climate mitigation goals and plans. The network plans to share information, create and disseminate scientifically sound materials, and provide experts and state policy officials with opportunities to discuss the latest in blue carbon science and application in the state policy arena.

Research led to states’ “blue carbon report card”

A major focus of the webinar was Pew-funded research conducted by SERC, which curates the Coastal Carbon Atlas, a central digital compilation of global blue carbon data.

“States are really the engine for a lot of the blue carbon science policy that’s developing in the United States, and trying to support state level actions is an important goal,” Pat Megonigal, SERC’s associate director for research, said during the webinar.

Jim Holmquist and Jaxine Wolfe of SERC developed four metrics to assess data in the Coastal Carbon Atlas for coastal states:

Data quantity (the number of “cores”—or soil samples—relative to coastal wetlands area in the state).
Data quality (how valuable the cores are in assessing blue carbon).
Spatial representation (how well dispersed sampling efforts are across the state’s coastal wetlands).
Habitat representation (how well habitats sampled match their estimated area in the state).

SERC then developed a “blue carbon report card” that provides a composite score for each state across all four metrics, summarized in the map below. For rankings by individual categories, see the State-Level Blue Carbon Data Report Card in the Coastal Carbon Research Coordination Network Blue Carbon Inventory report.

The highest-scoring states were Massachusetts, Oregon, Louisiana, and Washington, Wolfe, SERC’s research technician, told webinar attendees, with Delaware and California also rating highly. All of those states generally shared three traits: local investment in sufficient, high-quality data; research projects launched in the past five years in response to emerging blue carbon science; and researchers who actively collaborate with the Coastal Carbon Research Coordination Network, a SERC-sponsored consortium of biochemists, ecologists, social scientists, and managers working to expand coastal carbon science.

The research determined that at least five states had room for improvement in their data collection and/or representation: Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia.

“Collaboration between researchers and networks to increase data access is really important,” Wolfe said. This includes collaboration to synthesize existing data, publishing new data to increase access to data, and ensuring data is accessible and well documented, she added.

Lack of data may drive low ratings

The reasons states didn’t fare well on the report card could largely be because relevant data isn’t yet publicly available, Wolfe said. “Don’t be discouraged if your state is not performing the way you’d expect. These findings provide a baseline to enable targeted sampling efforts, and measure future progress.” Blue carbon scientists hope the inventory encourages public data sharing, which will improve results for all states, she added.

Also presenting on the webinar was Chris Janousek, an assistant professor at Oregon State University and a member of the PNW Blue Carbon Working Group, which helped provide data for the SERC analysis. Established in 2014, the group’s work now spans from northern California to British Columbia.

^{Birds take flight off the marshes of the Nature Conservancy’s 4,122-acre Port Susan Bay Preserve in Washington. Credit Bridget Bresaw/TNC}

In a recent study of blue carbon stocks in the Pacific Northwest, the working group found that seagrass meadows held the smallest amount of carbon stocks, marshes offered intermediate levels, and forested tidal wetlands—including conifers such as the Sitka spruce and other trees that tolerate brackish conditions—stored considerable amounts of carbon. Oregon’s forested tidal wetlands—which support fisheries, improve water quality, and protect communities from flooding—store more carbon per acre than almost any ecosystem on Earth, but have declined 95% from historic levels.

“The high carbon stocks they hold provides additional motivation for thinking about their restoration and conservation,” Janousek said. The group has now created a database with data from Mexico to Alaska to help researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders.

Both SERC and the PNW Blue Carbon Working Group stressed that they can help states understand blue carbon and how conserving and restoring coastal habitats can advance climate goals. They encouraged researchers to contribute to the expanding understanding of blue carbon by sharing their data for integration into SERC’s Coastal Carbon Atlas.

“We work with a lot of people’s data,” said Holmquist, a SERC research associate. “So, if you’re shy about your data being messy or poorly formatted, don’t be shy in front of us.” In addition, SERC is working to develop interactive tools to help users better interpret the atlas’ data.

To learn more, state officials and researchers can contact SERC and the PNW Blue Carbon Working Group.

Pew strongly supports this work because better understanding of coastal habitats’ blue carbon contributions will bolster science-based policies and management, which in turn can advance climate mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity.

Alex Clayton is a principal associate and Sylvia Troost is a senior manager at the Pew Charitable Trusts. They work on incorporating blue carbon into climate action plans for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Conserving Marine Life in the United States project.

This article was originally published by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Conserving Marine Life in the United States Project. Read the original article here.

U.S. Nature4Climate recently convened an expert panel to discuss the challenges and opportunities surrounding blue carbon as a climate mitigation strategy, including strategies to protect and restore coastal wetlands. Read a synopsis of that conversation in our Decision-Makers Guide to Natural Climate Solutions Science.

America the Beautiful, in Action: The Nature Conservancy's Recommendations for an Atlas to 2030 Conservation Goals

America’s landscapes are unlike anything in the world. The nation’s mountains, rivers, forests, coasts, farms and more are central to our identity and a backbone of our economy, our communities and our very lives.

But the twin crises of climate change and global biodiversity loss present an existential threat to these places and our future. If we do not act, we risk losing more of our natural world forever.

The America the Beautiful initiative launched last year is the United States’ response to this threat. It’s an ambitious but achievable goal to conserve, connect and restore 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.

But how do we get there?

For over 70 years, The Nature Conservancy has worked to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends, and many of the same principles and strategies we apply in our work will be critical to meeting this goal as well.

We recently submitted our recommendations to the federal government as it develops an “atlas” to guide and measure the progress toward this goal, including requirements and benchmarks for what counts. In our comments, we said America the Beautiful can only be successful if it is guided by five key principles:

Representation and Resilience. This effort must look at the diversity and quality of ecosystems represented, as well as the connectivity between and within ecosystems—not just a simple percentage of conserved lands and waters.

Equity and Inclusion. The America the Beautiful goal can only be achieved through strong, transparent and collaborative engagement with all stakeholders. It must also include attention to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice.

Durability. To last, conservation actions need support from local stakeholders. It is critical to represent a community’s needs and perspectives.

Effective Management. Long-term conservation must include transparent management goals along with specific measures of success and sufficient capacity – including workforce, policies and incentives – to do the work.

Assuring Adequate Funding. To successfully implement these conservation, management and restoration efforts restoration efforts must receive funding at a scale that can meet the need.

What counts as conserved lands, waters and ocean?

^{Conservation Corps of the Forgotten Coast members at St. Joseph Bay State Buffer Preserve, Port St. Joe, FL. Photo credit: Andrew Kornylak}

We know public lands and waters will have an essential role, but they alone won’t be enough to reach this goal. It will take working with private and working landowners, Indigenous communities and stakeholders at all levels to determine what kind of places should count as “conserved” and which places are the best options.

To help answer those questions, we recommended several factors the America the Beautiful initiative should consider. For example, although the history of conservation in the United States has been primarily land-based, all realms – land, freshwater and ocean – are interconnected and should be represented equally in this effort. It should also be inclusive of all ecological regions and ecosystem types within each realm.

With climate change leading to habitat fragmentation and driving global biodiversity loss, the initiative should focus on conserving climate-resilient sites and maintaining and expanding connectivity between those sites. This allows animal and plant species to migrate and adapt.

Maximizing natural climate solutions and carbon sequestration is also important, so attention to places with healthy trees and soils as well as marine and coastal habitats that absorb carbon will play a critical role. This should include an assessment of existing carbon stocks, as well as a better understanding of how climate change is impacting these realms.

And while the success of America the Beautiful depends on the resilience, distribution and connectivity between conservation areas, some areas may require restoration and improved management to maximize their ecosystems’ health and function.

Not Easy, But Essential

Conserving 30 percent of lands and waters is an ambitious goal that will take coordinated and often complex approaches. Yet we know from experience that if we guide this effort by science, collaboration and these key principles we can create a lasting future for our lands, waters and ocean.

Additional Resources: American Conservation & Stewardship Atlas Comments (.pdf)

Article re-published courtesy of The Nature Conservancy. Read the original article here.

Learn more about the crucial role that land conservation can play in addressing both the climate and biodiversity crises by visiting U.S. Nature4Climate’s “Conservation IS Climate Action” website.

Building American Wildfire Resiliency

This article was originally published by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Read the original article here.

Last year marked one of the worst wildfire seasons in United States history. More than 10 million acres burned across the country, forcing hundreds of thousands of Americans from their homes and costing the nation $16.5 billion in damages. Climate change contributed to a historically dry period for the Southwest U.S. in recent decades, making devastating wildfire seasons longer and more frequent. Since 2000, wildfires have burned an average of 7 million acres per year, more than double the average annual acres burned in the 1990s. Images of burnt orange skies spanning the Western U.S. are increasingly commonplace, and the costs of catastrophic yearly wildfires are becoming unbearable. While the impact of wildfires is mostly visible—burnt forests and communities, unhealthy air, and mass evacuations—they also have a less obvious effect: carbon dioxide emissions.¹

Wildfires and the emissions they release are a natural part of the disturbance regimes of many western forests, aiding in the regeneration of tree species, which in turn sequester more carbon. However, the complex cycle of ecosystem restoration from wildfires is thrown out of balance with catastrophic fire events. Severe burns impact tree survival rates and impede future growth by negatively affecting the soil. The 2020 California wildfires were some of the most catastrophic wildfire events in America’s recent history, releasing 112 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent emissions of 24.2 million cars on the road for a year. While the emissions released by wildfires is a drop in the bucket compared the 6,558 million metric tons of carbon dioxide released nationally in 2019, catastrophic wildfire events contribute to a feedback loop where drier conditions created by climate change further prolong wildfire seasons, increasing the prevalence of wildfires, and therefore increasing carbon emissions. Proper wildfire management is critical to reduce risks for American communities and protect fragile ecosystems.

Fire requires fuel to burn, and in the case of wildfires, trees, leaves, and vegetation are the fuel. Accumulated vegetation cause fires to burn faster, at higher temperatures, and with greater intensity, increasing the risk to communities, structures, and valuable infrastructure. Federal land management agencies along with state and local partners use fuel reduction projects to prevent wildfires from becoming more devastating by thinning vegetation and using prescribed burns. Prescribed burns are considered by many to be “good fires” since they are intentional, low-intensity fires that burn vegetation, reducing the amount of fuel available and mitigating the possibility of a larger, disastrous wildfire event. However, these wildfire management techniques are not being deployed on a wide enough scale. In fiscal year 2018, five federal land management agencies identified more than 100 million acres under their management at high risk from wildfires, yet they only treated approximately 3 million acres, leaving a sizable gap between the deployment of wildfire mitigation techniques and the high-risk acres in need of treatment.

Current Wildfire Management Approaches

Wildfires frequently cross jurisdictional boundaries, requiring strong collaboration among federal and nonfederal stakeholders on both wildfire prevention and wildfire management. At the federal level, five agencies are responsible for wildland fire management: the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. The federal government devotes significant funding to preventing and managing wildfires. In 2020, $952 million was appropriated for DOI’s Wildland Fire Management Budget and $2.35 billion was appropriated for USFS wildland fire management. An additional $445 million was appropriated for hazardous fuels management through the USFS. Notably, while the budgets for wildfire suppression have risen over the past decade, the budgets for hazardous fuels management have remained relatively constant.

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group was established in 1976 to provide “national leadership to enable interoperable wildland fire operations” and currently has 11 members representing federal, state, local, and tribal interests. More recently, the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enforcement Act of 2009 authorized the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, which was completed by the agencies and their partners in 2014. The Strategy acts as a framework to guide federal and nonfederal collaboration to develop resilient landscapes, create fire-adapted communities, and improve fire response.

Source: https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/strategy/thestrategy.shtml

The Strategy divides the U.S. into three regions: the Northeast, Southeast, and West. The frequency, size, and risk of wildfires varies geographically leading to regional differences in wildfire management approaches. Perhaps counterintuitive, the West experiences fewer wildfires than the Eastern U.S. But fires in the West burn significantly more acres and are more likely to make national headlines due to the scale of damage they cause. In 2020, only 700,000 acres burned in the East, while almost 9.5 million acres burned in the West. Frequently igniting on vast swaths of public land, Western wildfires often jump from public land to private land. Unique challenges to fire management in the West include changing climate conditions such as drought, invasive species, and steep terrain. Historically, wildfire management focused on suppressing all wildfires and did not consider the important role wildfires play in western ecosystems. After 100 years of fire suppression and changes to forest management, there is a dangerous buildup of surface fuels on western lands. A landscape-level approach that includes cross-jurisdictional collaboration on wildfire management is needed to mitigate and respond to wildfires in this region.

In Alaska, fire plays a critical role in improving ecosystem productivity, removing accumulated organic matter, and maintaining the permafrost table. However, climate change is leading to an increasing number of zombie fires – fires that come back after they appear to be extinguished – across the state. These fires can continue burning due to a thick layer of organic matter common in northern ecosystems. Fire suppression responsibility in Alaska falls to three protecting agencies: USFS, BLM, and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. Each protecting agency responds to fires within their assigned geographical area as defined in the Alaska Interagency Wildland Fire Management Plan regardless of jurisdictional agency.

Congressional Action

Signed into law in November 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) includes $6.5 billion in new funding for urgently needed wildfire risk reduction efforts underway within USDA and DOI. Of the $6.5 billion, $514 million is provided to the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service and $178 million to DOI to scale up their hazardous fuel reduction and management projects, resulting in more acres at high risk from wildfires being treated with wildfire mitigation techniques. To accomplish this, critical investments have been made in both real-time monitoring equipment to accelerate fire detection and reporting and an increase in wildland firefighters, with funding for at least 1,000 people to join the workforce, efforts to convert seasonal employees to full-time equivalents, and new compensation to recruit and retain wildland firefighters. This funding could more than double the pace of current treatments per year, but it still falls short of meeting the mounting climate threat.

Additionally, by including the bipartisan REPLANT Act and $225 million in new funding for burned area rehabilitation, the IIJA places significant emphasis on reforestation and ecosystem restoration, both of which are vital for a robust wildfire management strategy. Following wildfires, forest restoration efforts are needed to prevent further degradation of the landscape, such as soil erosion and landslides. Restoration has many benefits, including reducing wildfire risk, improved ecological and watershed health, increased carbon sequestration, and rural economic benefits from the use of forest restoration by-products. Passage of the REPLANT Act will reduce the backlog of 1.3 million acres of forests requiring reforestation by removing a $30 million cap placed on the Reforestation Trust Fund. Removing this cap will result in an average of $123 million going to reforestation each year, with priority given to forests degraded by wildfires and other natural disasters. This new demand for reforestation will support the nursery infrastructure and workforce across all land ownership types and advance tree planning as a natural climate solution. For more details on the IIJA’s significant impact on wildfire and carbon management, check out the BPC’s blog, The IIJA is a Big Deal for Carbon Management.

The IIJA’s wildfire mitigation funding is critical, but there’s potential for even greater Congressional action. During the 117th Congress, 143 bills have been introduced that would expand America’s wildfire mitigation and reforestation capabilities, 13 of which have bipartisan support. This is an enormous increase in bills introduced that address wildfires compared to a decade ago when the 112th Congress introduced 32 such bills. As wildfires grow more prevalent and devastating, the increased Congressional attention is vital to ensuring communities and ecosystems are protected. However, new strategies for combating catastrophic fire events and managing reforestation are needed to mitigate wildfires further.

The Future of Wildfire Management

Although progress is being made to improve federal and non-federal collaboration in wildfire management, current approaches are likely not enough to combat increasingly severe wildfire seasons due to climate change. According to a Government Accountability Office report, surveyed stakeholders stated the Cohesive Strategy encouraged collaboration, although there is room for improvement. New tools, resources, and innovative partnerships on the horizon offer opportunities for greater mitigation.

The All Lands Risk Explorer informs the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy through the use of geographic information system (GIS) maps that show where large fires are likely to occur and the associated impacts and benefits they would likely have. One feature of this web portal is the identification of community firesheds – areas where large fires are likely to start and spread, threatening nearby communities. This identification can support the development of fire-adapted communities by highlighting where the risk will most likely come from and who is responsible. Using this type of tool opens the door to more targeted treatments that can have a greater impact as well as better prioritization of funding. This is especially critical since a small percentage of wildfires account for the majority of the risk to communities and infrastructure.

The Nature Conservancy and the Aspen Institute have also recognized the need for change with the launch of their new partnership to improve wildfire resilience across the U.S. They are hosting a series of convenings with diverse stakeholders to develop recommendations for a comprehensive approach to boosting wildfire resilience. This work builds on previous work by TNC, which found that an additional $5 to $6 billion per year may be needed over the next decade to reduce wildfire risks and prepare communities.

The time is ripe for a paradigm shift in wildland fire management as the influx of federal funding from the IIJA is deployed. Prioritization will be essential for targeting high-risk community firesheds, and collaborative partnerships will be key to implementing new funding effectively. In addition to protecting lives, homes, and wildlife, wildfire management can contribute to climate mitigation. BPC’s Farm and Forest Carbon Solutions Task Force is focused on policy opportunities to scale natural climate solutions, including those related to enhanced wildfire resilience. In a recent statement, the Task Force called on Congress to prioritize landscape-scale climate resilience to wildfires in the current policy discourse, and will release recommendations and policy priorities in early 2022.

End Notes:

^{1 The specific type of emissions wildfires produce is determined by what they burn and how complete the combustion process is, so determining their net effect on the climate can be complicated. See https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3066/the-climate-connections-of-a-record-fire-year-in-the-us-west/ for more details.}

With No Time to Lose, We Must Keep Score

*_{Photo Credit: Eben Dente/American Forests}*

I am writing this article at a pivotal moment for America. The country is emerging from a global pandemic that has magnified health inequities, especially in terms of income and race. And climate change is moving faster than expected. During one week in June, for example, there were killer heat waves in the cool Pacific Northwest and flooding in the Great Lakes region.

These elevated stakes help explain why American Forests has made a commitment to keeping score — which we hope will lead to more people taking action to advance social equity and slow climate change, in part through the power of trees.

This started with the launch of our Tree Equity Score in June. This tool, the first of its kind, gives a neighborhood-by-neighborhood and municipal-level assessment of tree cover in every urban area across America. It overlays data that shows where the lack of trees most strongly puts people at risk from extreme heat, air pollution and other climate- fueled threats.

Collectively, the scores tell several compelling stories. For instance, on average, the lowest income neighborhoods have 41% less tree cover than high-income neighborhoods, and neighborhoods with a majority of residents of color have 33% less tree cover than majority white neighborhoods. This has life or death consequences, given that neighborhoods with little to no tree cover can be 10 degrees hotter than the city average during the day, and even more at night. In these same places, there is a higher percentage of people with elevated risk factors, such as heat-related illnesses and deaths because of lack of air conditioning.

That’s where Tree Equity Score comes in. By naming and framing this dangerous inequity with data and putting it online for all to see and explore, we have brought unprecedented attention to the importance of trees in advancing social equity. This includes a major feature in the New York Times, co-authored by our own Ian Leahy, vice president of urban forestry.

But this tool does much more than just identify the problem. It is as easy to use as a smart phone, making it simple for anyone, from city leaders to city residents, to calculate how many trees are needed for a city to achieve Tree Equity in every neighborhood. They also can see the economic and environmental benefits that would be generated, such as the tons of air pollution removed annually and number of jobs supported.

As evidence that Tree Equity Score can catalyze meaningful change, the Phoenix City Council voted in April to achieve Tree Equity in every one of the city’s neighborhoods by 2030. Other cities are following suit. And Congressional leaders, such as U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and U.S. Representative Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), are using it to make the case for unprecedented federal investment in urban trees and forests.

This data-driven approach is not limited to our work in cities. The Reforestation Hub, which we developed in partnership with The Nature Conservancy in January, doesn’t generate scores. But it does use cutting-edge scientific analysis of all U.S. land to identify where more trees could be added, from burn scars on national forests to streamside tree buffers on farms. It identifies a total opportunity of 133 million acres, enough land to plant more than 60 billion trees.

This has huge implications for climate change. That many additional trees would increase annual carbon capture in U.S. forests by more than 40%, equivalent to removing the emissions from 72 million cars.

Like Tree Equity Score, the Reforestation Hub is a free and easy-to-use tool meant to catalyze action. It is searchable county-by-county, enabling everyone to explore how our reforestation opportunities overlap with different land ownerships and conservation purposes, such as wildlife habitat and water protection. It also provides a calculation of the additional carbon capture that would be achieved if a given area were reforested. At American Forests, we use it often to advocate for reforestation legislation and make decisions about where to do our reforestation projects.

I encourage you to jump online and check out these powerful new tools. I hope that you will be inspired by our use of data to measurably challenge America and our own organization to meet this moment.

To learn more about Tree Equity Score, visit treeequityscore.org, and to learn more about the Reforestation Hub, visit reforestationhub.org.

Jad Daley is the President and Chief Executive Officer at American Forests.

This article was originally written for the American Forests website.

3 Ways Federal Investment in Trees and Forests Can Support Economic Growth

This article includes excerpts from a longer article published by World Resources Institute. Read the original article here.

*_{Photo Credit: Kent Mason/The Nature Conservancy}*

To reach the United States’ target of reducing net emissions by 50-52% from 2005 levels by 2030, the federal government and non-federal actors will need to increase the ability of natural and working lands to sequester and store carbon. A recent economy-wide analysis finds that reaching these climate goals will require the United States to enable its lands and forests, or its land carbon sink, to remove at least 913 Mt CO2e annually by 2030, which represents a 13% increase in yearly sequestration over 2019 levels. This increase in sequestration would be equal to the emissions from over 20 million cars every year.

To achieve this, the nation must restore trees to the landscape, increase the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices and protect landscapes that already store carbon. Federal investment and action from all levels of society can allow the United States to achieve the full potential of these pathways, creating jobs and other economic benefits in the process.

Seizing the United States’ Most Promising Natural Climate Solutions

While action is needed across all land sectors, research shows that three tree-based pathways hold the greatest opportunity for enhancing natural carbon removal in the near-term while supporting jobs and economic vitality. WRI analysis shows that these pathways could offer an attractive return on investment: they require a total federal investment of $126.6 billion over 20 years and would support approximately 3.9 million job-years (or 199,000 jobs each year for 20 years). Put another way, 31.4 jobs would be supported for every million dollars of federal investment. Over 20 years, this investment would also generate $226.8 billion in value added to local economies, including $164.4 billion in employee compensation and $12.2 billion in state, federal and local taxes.

Table 1: Economic Impact of Natural Climate Mitigation Pathways

1. Reforesting and Restocking Trees

Trees are a carbon-removing technology that is ready for deployment today. Although building the infrastructure to plant healthy forests at the necessary scale will require considerable investment and work, there are already professionals working to plant and manage trees and forests every day. Federal investment in reforestation and forest restocking could help to expand employment in these sectors, particularly in rural areas, where 67% of job creation potential exists.

Across federal, state, local and private lands, there is an opportunity to reforest historically forested land that has been cleared, disrupted or burned and has lost the ability to sequester carbon. There is also an opportunity to restock, or increase the density of, existing forests in the eastern and midwestern United States where trees have been lost due to disease or disruption, and where increased forested density would not increase fire risk.

Non-federal lands, which include state, local and private lands, hold the greatest potential for carbon removal and job creation. In these lands, 185.4 million acres are eligible for reforestation and restocking. This could remove 156 MtCO₂e per year by 2030, and up to 312 MtCO₂e per year in 2040 and beyond. Reforestation and restocking on non-federal land could also support 68,100 jobs across multiple sectors annually.

Federal lands offer an additional 18 million acres suitable for reforestation and restocking. Collectively, these lands could sequester an additional 17 MtCO₂e per year by 2030 and up to 35 MtCO₂e per year in 2040 and beyond. Investment in reforestation and restocking on federal land could support 11,700 jobs annually.

Across both federal and non-federal lands, an annual federal investment of $3 billion per year for 20 years could support 79,800 jobs annually, or 26.8 jobs per one million dollars of investment. Missouri, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would see the highest total levels of job creation from reforestation and restocking across all land ownership types.

2. Agroforestry

Agroforestry, or the practice of incorporating trees into agricultural systems, could help expand trees and their climate benefits. This would also benefit farmers and ranchers, as agroforestry can improve soil, crop and animal health, and provide added revenue from forest products and timber. Agroforestry practices with notable climate benefits include silvopasture, or integrating trees into animal agriculture; alley cropping, or interspersing row crops with rows of trees; and planting windbreaks, or strategically placed groups of shrubs and trees that prevent soil erosion and protect crops and livestock. There are approximately 110.9 million acres of U.S. cropland and pastureland that may be eligible for agroforestry and could sequester 156 MMT CO2e per year.

Establishing and maintaining agroforestry systems can be labor-intensive and require specialized expertise, which can further support jobs. However, agroforestry systems can be expensive to establish, which can pose a barrier for farmers. Federal investment can help landowners establish agroforestry systems and support jobs in the process. An annual federal investment of $1.8 billion in agroforestry could support 49,500 jobs annually, or 27.4 jobs per million dollars invested, and provide other economic benefits. Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Texas would see the highest total levels of job creation from expansion of agroforestry.

3. Wildfire Risk Mitigation

Many forests in the United States, particularly in Western states, are at high risk for severe fire due to widespread tree death from drought, disease and historical fire suppression. Severe fires threaten forest-adjacent communities and permanently damage trees and ecosystems, which can turn forests into a source of emissions. Wildfires also produce pollutants that can increase the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular health problems in people who inhale smoke.

Techniques to reduce severe wildfire risk include removing biomass, strategically thinning out overly dense forests and conducting controlled, low-intensity burns to remove fuels that could feed severe blazes. These kinds of treatments — known as fuel load treatments — do not prevent wildfire from occurring, but they lower the risk of massive fires. Prescribed burning alone could reduce wildfire carbon emissions in the western United States by 18–25% and could increase long-term forest carbon storage by 18 MtCO₂ per year through avoided tree mortality.

The increasing frequency of catastrophic wildfires across the United States highlights the importance of ambitious and immediate investment to increase ecosystem health and reduce the risk of severe wildfire. There are over 86.7 million acres of forest in the nation that could be eligible for fuel load treatments. Federal investment could help mitigate the risk of wildfire in these forests and would directly employ prescribed burn professionals and forestry professionals. Fuel load treatment also generates biomass and timber that can have downstream uses that generate employment.

Accounting for both fuel load treatment jobs and jobs supporting wood and biomass processing, a yearly federal investment of $1.5 billion in fuel load reduction could support 69,600 jobs, or 45.2 jobs per million dollars invested. The states with most potential to support jobs related to wildfire risk mitigation are California, New Mexico, Wyoming, Oregon and Idaho.

An Opportunity for Society-Wide Action

While federal action is essential to enhance and protect the land carbon sink, reaching the nation’s climate goals will require states, local governments, the private sector and civil society to push forward their own initiatives to reforest and restock forests and to mitigate wildfire risk. For example:

States can create or expand programs that incentivize climate-friendly land management and restock and reforest state-owned lands, like states participating in the US Climate Alliance’s Natural and Working Lands Challenge are doing. States can also work with the federal government to further improve greenhouse gas inventories. States with fire danger can also increase budgets for thinning and prescribed burning.
Cities and local governments can expand urban forestry efforts to plant trees in parks and open space. For example, Washington, D.C. aims to have 40% of the city covered by a healthy tree canopy by 2032.They can also help community members living in wilderness-urban interface areas to reduce flammable material near structures and build fire-adapted communities.
Businesses can ensure that the agricultural and timber products in their supply chain are sourced from farms and forests that use climate-friendly mitigation practices and increase investments in land-based climate mitigation strategies.
Tribal communities, schools and faith-based groups can plant trees and enhance land management practices to sequester more carbon and mitigate wildfire risk.

Note: Where not otherwise specified, economic impact, acreage potential and carbon removal potential were derived as part of analysis for WRI’s working paper The Economic Benefits of The New Climate Economy in Rural America. Please refer to this paper’s appendices for information on methodology.

Haley Leslie-Bole, is a Research Analyst with WRI’s U.S. Climate Initiative, where she works on landscape-scale solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation in the U.S.

Land, Climate and Corazon

*_{Photo Credit: Shana Edberg/Hispanic Access Foundation}*

Have you felt that life seems to make more sense when you’re out in nature? In the concrete and the polluted air of built-up neighborhoods, we feel a turmoil and pull from our obligations that melts away under the shade of trees and the clean air of the mountainside. Natural areas are a respite from our everyday lives, and increased usage of our national parks and public lands and waters during the pandemic has confirmed how badly we need it.

But nature is more than a respite for the mind, body and soul in times of stress. It is a respite from the dangers of the climate crisis, a carbon sink, and a source of clean air, water, and soil that we rely on for our basic needs. It is also a provider of local jobs and revenue and a boon to children’s education.

Unfortunately, not everyone is able to access and unlock these benefits. Nationally, communities of color are three times more likely to live somewhere that’s “nature deprived.” A nature-deprived neighborhood is one that is facing a greater rate of destruction of close-to-home natural areas and green spaces than average, be it from urban sprawl, gray infrastructure, or oil and gas development. With communities of color also more likely to be over-burdened by sources of pollution, this is a double whammy of environmental injustice.

Protecting natural areas and restoring degraded areas that are close to urban areas and communities of color is a way to help mitigate this injustice. One such example of a beautiful protected area is the San Gabriel Mountains, at the northern edge of the Los Angeles Basin, where I grew up. Los Angeles County is a large urbanized area encompassing multiple cities and millions of residents, many of whom are underserved and live in nature-deprived neighborhoods.

More than 15 million people live within 90 minutes of the San Gabriel Mountains, and the mountains provide 70 percent of Los Angeles’ green space – alleviating the Nature Gap. The mountains also provide a third of LA County’s drinking water. President Obama designated the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in 2014, protecting LA’s water quality, improving air quality, and providing better access to outdoor recreation for millions of Angelenos while protecting the area’s ecosystems and wildlife.

The Angeles National Forest, which encompasses the Monument, is also a key player in the Earth’s climate system. The range’s trees and chaparral absorb carbon dioxide from the air and together store 11.6 Million Metric Tons of carbon, equivalent to the emissions from 2.5 million cars for a year.

Hispanic Access Foundation works with community leaders and policymakers throughout California and the US to bring the benefits of nature to Latino communities. From the absorption of pollutants to resilience to extreme heat, droughts, and storms to the physical and mental health benefits of being outdoors, our communities need access to nature more than ever in an increasingly chaotic and warming world.

Decision-makers in Congress, the Biden administration, and the State of California are currently considering policy that would protect more nature in California. One such example is the PUBLIC Lands Act, introduced by Senators Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein, which would protect and increase access to more than one million acres of public lands and over 500 miles of rivers in California, including the San Gabriel Mountains. Another policy example is Governor Newsom’s Executive Order to protect 30% of California’s lands, water, and ocean by 2030 (known as 30×30), a goal that is also reflected nationally in the Biden Administration’s America the Beautiful initiative.

In addition, there are several areas on land and sea that have been nominated for protected area designations or that could have their protections reinstated following Trump-era orders to weaken and shrink them. These areas include the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, important for preserving indigenous heritage off the California coast; the Western Riverside Wildlife Refuge, bringing nature access to California’s Inland Empire; Caster Range National Monument, important to Latino heritage and access to nature in El Paso, TX; the Ch e sapeake National Recreation Area, boosting access to nature for Latinos and communities of color surrounding the Chesapeake Bay; the restoration of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monuments; among many others.

These nature protection and restoration policies must be implemented equitably, centering the needs and voices of communities of color, in order to guarantee a safe, inclusive, pollution-free outdoors for all that addresses environmental justice, meets community needs, and confronts the urgency of the climate crisis we face.

Watch this video to learn more about the importance of protecting public lands, such as California’s San Gabriel Mountains for conservation.

Shanna Edberg is the Director of Conservation Programs at Hispanic Access Foundation.

Oregon Climate Plan Is First in U.S. to Account for ‘Blue Carbon’ Benefits of Coastal Habitats

_{Danger Point Marsh in Oregon’s South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve is home to numerous wetland research projects, including studies that allow scientists to estimate rates of carbon storage in the region’s tidal wetlands. Photo Credit: Craig Cornu.}

Oregon’s estuaries, where rivers meet the sea, are home to forested tidal wetlands, ecosystems that store more carbon by area than almost any other type of wetland in the world. And for the first time, Oregon may begin accounting for and utilizing this benefit to help track and reduce the state’s carbon footprint.

On August 4, the Oregon Global Warming Commission adopted a proposal to harness the potential of the state’s forests, wetlands, and agricultural lands—known collectively as “natural and working lands”—to help Oregon achieve its goals for reducing greenhouse gases. The natural and working lands plan includes one of the nation’s first strategies that explicitly accounts for the carbon sequestration powers of coastal habitats, broadly referred to as “blue carbon.” The plan now goes to Governor Kate Brown and legislators for implementation.

Oregon’s blue carbon habitats, which include marshes, eelgrass beds, scrub-shrub wetlands, and forested tidal wetlands, are comparable to the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth forests in terms of how much carbon they can store per acre. Because they take more carbon out of the atmosphere than they release, these ecosystems are known as “carbon sinks” and can play an important role in efforts to slow climate change, especially if they’re protected or, where needed, restored. These areas also protect coastal communities from sea level rise, flooding, and erosion; improve water quality; provide vital habitat for salmon and other Pacific Northwest species; and help reduce ocean acidification in nearby waters.

The commission’s proposal includes a goal for increasing sequestration in Oregon’s landscapes, including coastal wetlands. The commission also recommended investments, programs, and policies that the state should advance to increase natural carbon storage, including development of a blue carbon plan aimed at protecting and restoring coastal habitats.

The Pew Charitable Trusts, working with the Pacific Northwest Blue Carbon Working Group, Silvestrum Climate Associates, and the Oregon Coastal Management Program (part of the state’s Department of Land Conservation and Development), supported the development of a first-generation blue carbon greenhouse gas inventory, made recommendations for improving the inventory, and contributed to the strategies included in the proposal.

With the adoption of this strategy, Oregon is poised to be a national leader and an example for other states in harnessing the power of blue carbon ecosystems in the fight against climate change.

This blog post was originally published by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Sylvia Troost, Alex Clayton, and Elizabeth Ruther work on The Pew Charitable Trusts’ conserving marine life in the United States project.

How Climate Action Can Reboot Economies in Rural America

*_{Photo Credit: Mark Alexander/iStock}*

Many rural counties in the United States face the dual challenges of lagging economic growth and increasingly severe effects of climate change. While urban areas are not uniformly prosperous and rural areas are not uniformly poor, rural communities on average lag behind their urban counterparts on most key economic indicators — from poverty rates to labor force participation. Rural areas represent 86% of persistent poverty counties in the U.S., while over 50% of rural Black residents live in economically distressed counties.

These challenges have been intensified by economic losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated existing inequalities and highlighted urgent infrastructure needs. At the same time, catastrophic wildfires, record heatwaves, drought and other severe weather events linked to climate change threaten rural communities and livelihoods.

Addressing both the climate crisis and lagging economic vitality will require federal investment in building a new climate economy for rural America — one that reduces greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero while creating jobs, uplifting economically disadvantaged communities, and enhancing ecosystem services. This opportunity is already being realized in targeted regions (clean energy is a growing economic engine for many rural communities) and federal policymakers now have the opportunity to dramatically expand on this progress.

New WRI analysis finds that an annual federal investment of nearly $15 billion in key areas of the rural new climate economy would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in rural communities, add billions of dollars of value to rural economies, and generate millions in new tax revenues. This investment would help combat the economic stagnation confronting many rural areas and ensure that the benefits of the transition to a net-zero economy are widely distributed.

Understanding Rural Economic Opportunity by Area and Geography

In this new paper, we analyzed the impact of $55 billion per year in federal investment in seven areas of the new climate economy over at least five years. These include investments in renewable energy; energy efficiency; transmission, distribution, and storage (TDS); environmental remediation of abandoned fossil fuel infrastructure; tree restoration on federal and non-federal lands; and wildfire risk management. An estimated $14.9 billion of that investment (27%) would be directed to rural America.

That investment would support nearly 260,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs for at least five years in rural counties (a total of 1.3 million job-years) and 740,000 jobs for five years in the country as a whole (a total of 3.7 million job-years). This equates to 17.5 jobs per $1 million invested in rural counties.

The results also indicate that new climate economy federal investment in rural areas would offer an attractive return on investment by adding $21.7 billion per year to rural economies for the first five years — $1.46 for every dollar invested. This includes $12.9 billion in employee compensation and $1.6 billion in federal, state and local tax revenues. The figure below shows the distribution of economic benefits across the seven investment areas.

Rural Economic Impacts by Investment Area (each year for first five years)

* Results in the table are for rural counties only. For the purposes of this analysis, we use Rural-Urban Continuum Codes developed by the USDA Economic Research Service to delineate rural areas. This geographic-economic classification scheme distinguishes between two broad types of regions: metropolitan counties (codes 1-3) and non-metropolitan counties (codes 4-9). This analysis considers all non-metropolitan counties to be rural. Source: The Economic Benefits of New Climate Economy in Rural America, 2021

Job creation benefits would be widely dispersed across the country’s rural areas and vary by sector depending on regional economic factors. The top five states seeing the most significant impacts in terms of job creation relative to the size of local rural economies would be California, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Wyoming and Nevada.

California, New Mexico and Nevada would benefit most substantially from wildfire risk management investment. Massachusetts and Nevada, by contrast, would benefit largely from investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and grid transmission and distribution.

The analysis shows the geographic distribution of rural job creation potential (measured as jobs created in a rural county per 1,000 private sector workers, aggregated at the state level) from federal investment in each of the seven areas analyzed. Different investment areas naturally impact regions differently depending on local economic factors and where opportunities are located.

For instance, Massachusetts, California, Nevada, Maryland and Illinois would see the most job creation benefits from federal investments in renewable energy, while rural counties in Pennsylvania, Kansas, West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming would benefit most from investments in environmental remediation of orphaned oil and gas wells and abandoned coal mines. The latter is particularly important given that these are the same regions that have seen significant job losses due to the phasing out of coal generation. Investment in these regions can therefore help ensure a more just economic transition.

Rural counties in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and New Mexico are expected to see the highest levels of job creation from investment in tree restoration on federal lands, while those in Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota, Michigan and Wisconsin would benefit most from investment in tree restoration, including agroforestry, on state, local and private lands.

Direct and Indirect Benefits of Rural Investment in the New Climate Economy

Federal investments in the rural new climate economy would also provide benefits beyond job creation. Wind energy can help farmers and landowners earn money, providing additional income support and enhancing financial stability during lean times. Energy efficiency projects can help reduce energy bills for rural households by as much as 25%, representing more than $400 in annual household savings.

Investments in wildfire risk mitigation can help reduce the danger that catastrophic wildfires pose to rural communities and forests — an important point given that western wildfires are becoming more frequent and more destructive. In 2018 alone, wildfires in California cost the U.S. economy 0.7% of the nation’s annual GDP, highlighting the need to invest in measures that can help mitigate fire risks.

Local tax payments generated from these projects also provide much-needed revenue to rural communities for investing in new and improved infrastructure including roads, bridges and schools. In some cases, when a renewable energy project comes to a rural area, it is the largest single taxpayer in the county and accounts for a large share of the county’s budget.

Potential Impact on Economically Disadvantaged Rural Communities

To enable a new climate economy that supports economic wellbeing in all communities, federal investment in the seven areas described above must support the nation’s most economically disadvantaged rural communities.

The new climate economy opportunities described previously could create more than 118,000 jobs for at least five years (a total of 590,000 job-years) in these counties, resulting in over $9.8 billion added to these rural economies annually, including $5.9 billion in employee compensation and $685 million in total taxes.

Economically disadvantaged rural counties in California, Texas, New Mexico, Missouri and Kentucky stand to benefit the most in terms of total jobs supported by federal investment in the seven focus areas of this analysis.

Federal Investment in the New Climate Economy Could Significantly Benefit Economically Disadvantaged Rural Counties

While this job creation is significant, representing approximately 45% of job creation potential from investment in the seven areas of the new climate economy, more needs to be done to ensure economic benefits reach the areas where they are most needed.

Actions on this front could include: workforce training programs in the energy and land sectors with employment guarantees; measures to make clean energy affordable for low-income households; grant programs to support local businesses and nonprofit organizations; and requirements that new program designs be collaborative, inclusive and accessible to all workers.

Federal Policies Can Support a Rural New Climate Economy

The federal government has an opportunity to enact and expand policies that will drive investments in the new climate economy, creating jobs and bolstering rural economies in the process. Fully activating the opportunities analyzed in each of the seven areas would require a suite of federal policies, which could support a larger federal plan for rebuilding infrastructure and mitigating climate change.

The current push by Congress and the Biden administration to invest in the country’s ailing infrastructure and tackle the climate crisis represents the most promising political moment in years to support a new climate economy in rural America.

The proposed American Jobs Plan, representing the administration’s basis for negotiations with Congress on infrastructure, would provide historic levels of federal funding for places that have faced declining economic opportunities.

Several policy provisions of the American Jobs Plan — including investments in transmission lines, rural electric cooperatives to advance low-cost clean energy in rural communities, plugging orphan wells and cleaning up abandoned coal mines, and forest restoration — have the potential to create jobs and spur broad-based economic growth

The investments considered in our analysis, however, will likely not be sufficient on their own to recruit and train the workforce necessary to implement new climate economy pathways.

The policies recommended here will also need to include mechanisms to ensure that jobs created provide minimal barriers to entry, are well-paid, offer opportunities for stable employment and benefits, and support unionization. These components will help ensure that the new climate economy will not just create jobs, but sustain worker and community well-being and create equitable opportunities for all.

Federal policy opportunities by investment area

Renewable energy	Extend investment tax credits and production tax credits for renewable energy Reauthorize tax incentives for clean energy manufacturing facilities through section 48C of the tax code Expand grant and loan programs that help rural communities finance renewable energy, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Energy for America Program (REAP)
Energy efficiency	Extend tax incentives for efficiency upgrades in homes and residential buildings, including the existing homes tax credit (tax code sec. 25C) and new homes tax credit (sec. 45L) Extend tax incentives for efficiency upgrades in new and existing commercial buildings (sec. 179D) Boost funding level for block grant programs that channel money directly to state and local agencies for efficiency upgrades, including the Weatherization Assistance Program, State Energy Program, and Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grants program, and create a comparable program for industrial facilities Expand grant and loan programs targeted at rural communities, including the USDA REAP program, Energy Efficiency Conservation Loan Program, and Rural Energy Savings Program
Transmission, distribution, and storage	Create tax credits to incentivize the build out of transmission projects that are regionally significant and can enable renewable energy integration on the grid and stand-alone energy storage technologies Reauthorize tax credits to incentivize domestic clean energy manufacturing facilities (sec. 48C) Reauthorize the Department of Energy’s Smart Grid Investment Grant program to promote investments in smart grid technologies Authorize the Department of Transportation to make transmission infrastructure projects, especially those that emphasize the integration of renewable energy, eligible under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan guarantee program Expand loans and loan guarantees through USDA Electric Infrastructure Loan & Loan Guarantee to help finance transmission and distribution systems in rural areas Create a program to provide grants and technical assistance to rural electric cooperatives to deploy energy storage and microgrid technologies
Environmental remediation of abandoned fossil fuel infrastructure	Increase federal funding to clean up abandoned coal mine sites Create a new program for plugging and remediation at orphaned oil and gas well sites
Tree restoration on federal lands	Remove the funding cap on the Reforestation Trust Fund Increase appropriations for programs that fund restoration projects on federal land
Tree restoration on non-federal lands	Implement a refundable or transferable tax credit for natural carbon sequestration Enhance USDA conservation programs to incentivize natural carbon sequestration and reduce transaction costs for landowners, especially underserved landowners Provide additional funding through state and local grants and the State and Private Forestry programs of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS)

_{Source: The Economic Benefits of New Climate Economy in Rural America, 2021}

Rural America’s Crucial Role in U.S. Climate Change Policies

Rural America will be indispensable in enabling the country to reach net-zero emissions: rural farmers, ranchers, and forest owners manage large segments of lands that hold enormous opportunities for climate mitigation. Rural areas are also crucial for clean energy development: 99% of all onshore wind capacity in the country is located in rural areas, as is the majority of utility-scale solar capacity.

U.S. climate policy, informed by the unique needs and context of rural America, can not only harness the power of rural communities to address climate change but also generate significant economic opportunities for these communities. This approach will be essential to helping the nation meet ambitious decarbonization goals while creating millions of good jobs across the country.

This article was originally published by the World Resources Institute.

Why Greenhouse Gas Inventories Are Important for Natural and Working Lands — and How to Fix Them

This piece was jointly authored by Alex Rudee with the World Resources Institute and Jenn Phillips with the U.S. Climate Alliance and was originally published by the World Resources Institute.

*_{Photo Credit: USDA NRCS Montana/Flickr}*

Inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a critical tool in the fight against climate change. GHG inventories allow entities like countries, states, cities and businesses to measure how much progress they are making toward meeting emissions-reduction targets, such as those set under the Paris Climate Agreement. Climate policies at all levels of government are also informed by data in GHG inventories.

The U.S. Climate Alliance has facilitated ambitious state-level action on climate change since 2017, when the United States government announced its intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. To support states’ technical needs in building and implementing these climate action plans — including by developing robust GHG inventories — the U.S. Climate Alliance has convened an “Impact Partnership” of nonprofit organizations with relevant expertise, including WRI. Through that partnership, WRI and the U.S. Climate Alliance have published a guide for states to develop and improve their GHG inventories with an eye toward one particular sector that has often been shortchanged: natural and working lands (NWL). But to understand why a state-level guide specific to land-based GHG inventories is needed, it’s important to first know what a GHG inventory is, why inventories are produced and how they are created.

Inventory Basics: What, Why and How

1. What is a GHG inventory?

An inventory accounts for all human-caused emissions and removals of GHGs associated with a specific entity. The inventory essentially acts as a climate change balance sheet, tracking the total volume of GHG emitted from sources like fossil fuel consumption and agricultural production alongside the volume of GHG removed by sequestration in plants and soils or through technological means. Good inventories transparently report their data sources and methodologies so the calculations and assumptions that underlie GHG estimates are clear. Typically, entities produce GHG inventories annually or on some other regular schedule to monitor changes in their GHG emissions and removals over time.

2. Why produce a GHG inventory?

As the saying goes, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Measuring GHG emissions and removals through GHG inventories is therefore a necessary first step to manage our collective carbon footprint. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has required participating nations, including the United States, to produce and submit annual GHG inventories since 1997 to measure progress toward international climate goals. In more recent years, many U.S. states have voluntarily published their own GHG inventories to inform development of state climate action plans and provide accountability for their emissions reduction goals.

With the U.S. government and the U.S. Climate Alliance’s recent commitment to reduce collective net GHG emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve overall net-zero GHG emissions no later than 2050, the accuracy and comprehensiveness of these inventories has never been more paramount. Achieving net-zero at both the federal and state levels will require concerted action — not only to reduce emissions throughout the economy, but also to increase carbon removals, including the management of natural and working lands.

NWL, which include forests, croplands, grasslands, wetlands and urban trees and soils, make up the only sector in the U.S. that removes more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits, reducing total U.S. emissions by nearly 800 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, or about 12% of U.S. gross emissions. This increase in land-based carbon storage, which overwhelmingly comes from forest growth, offsets the 10% of gross U.S. emissions from agricultural production. Emissions from agricultural production, which includes soil fertilization, manure management, enteric fermentation and other sources related to crop and livestock cultivation, are typically considered separately from NWL in GHG inventories.

With additional investment in conservation, restoration and land management, the amount of carbon removed by NWL in the U.S. can grow significantly, offsetting a greater portion of U.S. gross emissions and moving the U.S. closer to meeting its ambitious GHG reduction targets.

3. How are Natural and Working Lands included in GHG inventories?

Unlike GHG emissions from fossil fuel combustion, which are easily tracked through publicly reported energy use data, emissions and removals from NWL are more difficult to measure. These emissions and removals are occurring constantly over millions of acres due to farming and forestry operations alongside natural ecosystem carbon cycles, making universal monitoring very challenging. In many cases, scientists are also still refining our understanding of how land management practices like forest restoration or conservation tillage impact GHG flows in those environments. Therefore, GHG inventories typically rely on sample data to estimate the area of NWL within certain classifications and GHG models or approximate “emission factors” to estimate GHG emissions and removals as a function of area.

*_{GHG inventories typically rely on sample-based measurements to estimate carbon sequestration in forests. Photo by Lance Cheung for Forest Service, USDA/Flickr.}*

These challenges illustrate why estimates of land-based emissions and removals in GHG inventories are typically much more uncertain than energy emissions. Contributors to the uncertainty include:

Timeliness of data inputs (how long ago data were collected).
Spatial and temporal resolution of inventory data (how finely data can be mapped over space and time).
Gaps in inventory coverage (which sources of emissions and removals are omitted).
Error in GHG models and emission factors (how accurately the calculations mirror real-world emissions and removals).

These challenges are compounded at the state level, where most states lack the resources to develop their own inventories and have had to depend on federal data and tools with significant limitations. Many states, for example, use the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) State Inventory Tool (SIT), which applies the same methods and data sources used for EPA’s National GHG Inventory at the state level. However, much of the data on land-based emissions and removals used in the National Inventory is not available at the state level, so SIT has relied on older and less accurate data to fill gaps. SIT also does not publish measures of uncertainty. For these reasons, many states have opted to leave NWL out of their GHG inventories entirely, while others that do include SIT estimates for that sector have cautioned against relying on them for goal-setting or policymaking purposes.

How to Improve GHG Inventories for Natural and Working Lands

Fortunately, a mix of current and emerging datasets and technologies can help states improve their estimates of GHG emissions and removals from NWL. These inventory improvement options have the potential to not only address specific limitations of SIT, but could also provide even more accurate and granular information than the National Inventory. More accurate, more transparent and higher resolution estimates of NWL emissions and removals can help state governments set robust climate targets specifically for NWL in addition to measuring progress toward existing goals, informing new climate policies and underlying plans for climate-smart land management.

Most options for states to improve the NWL data in their inventories follow one or both of two strategies. Either the state can collect new field measurement data, for example by adding to the Forest Service’s network of forest inventory plots or by measuring carbon in soil samples; or the state can use remote sensing tools like LiDAR and satellite imagery to complement existing data from field measurements.

All inventory improvements come with costs, so states will need to prioritize improvements based on their potential impact, policy relevance and feasibility. WRI’s Guide to NWL Inventory Improvements walks states through available options for improving inventory data for each land use type included in a NWL inventory along with factors to consider in deciding where to prioritize limited state resources.

Several U.S. states have already begun to implement innovations in their NWL inventories. In March 2021, Maryland committed to replace forest data from SIT with a new inventory method that uses high-resolution LiDAR and satellite imagery to model forest carbon over time, based on research conducted by the University of Maryland and WRI under a grant from the U.S. Climate Alliance. Across the country, California, Oregon and Washington have all worked with the Forest Service to develop state-specific estimates of carbon in wood products, allowing them to update the decades-old data in SIT. Even farther west, Hawai’i partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey to create its first NWL inventory, as most of the federal datasets that underlie SIT did not include data for Hawai’i.

These are just a few of the exciting innovations states are pursuing to improve their inventories. But many other states lack the resources or capacity to take on their own improvement projects and the need for more national coordination and consistent, quality GHG estimation tools and NWL datasets that can be utilized by every state remains. Therefore, it’s clear that federal investment is paramount. Recent federal efforts, like the publication of new Forest Service research in 2020 that quantified forest carbon emissions and removals at the state level, help move the ball forward — but there is still much room for improvement.

3 Ways the Federal Government Can Help Improve State Inventories

The Guide to NWL Inventory Improvements identified three key needs across states, spanning the key NWL systems of forests, agricultural soils and wetlands, where the federal government would be best positioned to lead inventory improvements. With President Biden restoring the United States to a leadership role on climate action hours after becoming president, these opportunities offer common sense steps to advance the role of NWL in climate action plans at all levels of government.

1. Develop a national remote sensing-based forest and land use inventory.

The National GHG Inventory and SIT rely on data from the Forest Service’s Forest Inventory & Analysis program (FIA), which is among the most comprehensive forest monitoring systems in the world, but was not designed to meet current demands for precise carbon data at a variety of scales. Using federal data products like Landsat and GEDI, the federal government could complement FIA with remote sensing data to map and model carbon emissions and removals across the landscape, reducing uncertainty in forest carbon estimates.

2. Monitor soil carbon through national field networks.

Carbon sequestration in agricultural soils is currently modeled, not measured, to calculate GHG estimates in the National Inventory and SIT, leading to uncertainty of over 1,000% nationally for some soil carbon removal estimates. Regular, systematic collection of soil carbon field measurements through the federal National Resources Inventory (NRI) could help refine models and reduce this uncertainty dramatically. The National Academies of Sciences has estimated the cost of this endeavor at just $5 million per year.

3. Develop a national spatial inventory of GHG emissions in wetlands.

Wetlands are among the least-understood contributors to GHG emissions from NWL. No consistent data on wetland GHG emissions exist at the state level, and even the National Inventory does not account for GHG emissions from most terrestrial, or freshwater, wetlands. The federal government could improve this understanding by creating a high-resolution spatial dataset to monitor changes in wetland extent, vegetation and management, incorporating existing data from the Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) and National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) where relevant, and pairing it with a network of field plots to derive regionally-specific emission factors for different wetland types.

Helping States Lead the Way on GHG Inventories for Natural and Working Lands

For the last four years, states have been forging ahead with climate action even as the federal government rolled back environmental regulations and withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. States in the U.S. Climate Alliance have led the way in linking land management to climate change mitigation through the NWL Challenge, but they need better data and inventory methods in order to act boldly and effectively. Some states have jumped out ahead by experimenting with new methods for carbon monitoring in NWL, but federal action has the unique ability to “lift all boats” when it comes to data quality and consistency. As it now re-engages on climate change at home and abroad, the federal government has an opportunity to put wind under the wings of state leadership by investing in the tools they need to monitor and manage land for a climate-friendly future.

Alex Rudee is a Manager for U.S. Natural Climate Solutions at World Resources Institute. Jenn Phillips is a Senior Policy Advisor for Natural and Working Lands and Resilience at U.S. Climate Alliance. Both Alex and Jenn serve on the U.S. Nature4Climate steering committee.