From left to right: George Steinmetz/TNC, Devan King/TNC, and The Land Institute.
Natural Climate Solutions Toolbox
While momentum behind Natural Climate Solutions has increased significantly over the past few years, limited resources constrain governments, landowners and non-profits from harnessing the full potential of these solutions. While legislation such as the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will provide opportunities to expand investment in these nature-based climate solutions, strategic planning will be vital to ensure that resources are deployed in the most cost-effective and impactful way possible.
Fortunately, a wide array of free and publicly available tools has been developed by members of our coalition and others recently to help decision-makers accomplish this task. These tools, which frequently feature interactive maps and downloadable data, can help governments, tribes, landowners and non-profit organizations identify relatively low-cost, high-impact opportunities for implementing Natural Climate Solutions across a variety of different landscapes, including agricultural land, forests, coastlines, and urban areas. In many cases, the tools also outline the additional environmental, social and economic benefits that implementation of these strategies can provide for local communities.
Our Natural Climate Solutions toolbox helps decision-makers navigate these resources by providing links and guidance about the practical use of each of these tools – what questions can each tool help decision-makers answer? In many cases, we also provide links to case studies, explainer documents and articles providing additional context on the use of each tool.
What kinds of climate policies focused on natural and working lands have U.S. Climate Alliance states advanced over the past 5 years?
What states have incorporated natural and working lands into their greenhouse gas inventories? What ecosystems have been included?
The U.S. Climate Alliance’s first-of-its-kind Climate Policy Database, which provides one of the country’s most detailed snapshots of state-led climate action to date. The interactive, user-friendly, and searchable database provides detailed information on climate action from the Alliance’s states and territories, offering a wide-ranging, comparative, and up-to-date view of state-level climate action across the U.S. The new tool enables users to search climate policies by sector, geography, policy or action type, keyword, and timeframe. Unique among other policy trackers, it allows users to view the chronological sequence of steps taken by a state or territory to reach a policy outcome, tracing policy pathways through multiple stages and tracking how established policies have evolved over time. While the Alliance Secretariat has long tracked this information internally, this marks the first time the data has been standardized and made available to the public.
In addition to supporting Alliance members, the tool will benefit governmental, non-profit, and academic partners at the local, state, national, and international levels interested in tracking U.S. state-led climate action. The Alliance Secretariat will continue to enhance the platform’s content and functionality over the coming weeks and months utilizing user feedback, which can be provided directly through the database website.
What Natural Climate Solution Strategies have the most potential in my state? How can we structure our state’s Natural & Working Lands climate program to account for these opportunities?
How should incentive programs be structured to leverage these opportunities? Market-based approaches? Grant programs?
The U.S. Natural Climate Solutions Mapper illustrates the greenhouse gas mitigation impact of 11 Natural Climate Solutions pathways that can be adopted on agricultural, forested, and urban lands, with data broken down at the state level.
The mapper’s data estimates the amount of carbon that can be sequestered by each of the 11 pathways. It estimates not only the maximum potential, but also the amount of mitigation that would be achieved with different levels of carbon payments, at three different carbon prices. The higher the carbon payment, the more the adoption of new practices is incentivized, leading to greater benefits for the climate. The tool illustrates the benefits can be achieved while still maintaining current croplands and developed areas.
The mapper can serve as a powerful resource for state-level decision-makers to identify which Natural Climate Solution practices offer the most efficient pathways for carbon reductions in their state. It was designed to help inform states’ plans and strategies for facilitating the adoption of nature-based climate solutions strategies.
How can communities integrate trees and forest into their Climate Action Plans?
How can communities track the annual greenhouse gas impacts associated with changes to forests and tree cover over time?
Many communities in the U.S. are developing Climate Action Plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. While many of these plans focus on the energy, transportation and waste sectors, most do not consider the role forests and trees play in the fight against climate change. This is because planners have lacked the data and clear guidance needed to include them in greenhouse gas inventories, which Climate Action Plans are based. Forests and trees play a critical role in carbon sequestration while providing other benefits to communities, including improved air quality, reduced energy costs, and increased well-being. Accurately monitoring these resources over time may enable communities to make better land management decisions that benefit both climate and people.
To help communities incorporate trees and forests into their Climate Action Plans, experts from WRI, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI USA) and the Woodwell Climate Research Center published guidance for ICLEI USA’s U.S. Community Protocol as well as the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories – frameworks that outline how to estimate emissions caused by forest and tree cover loss within communities, as well as carbon absorbed by forests and trees that a community maintains and plants. The accompanying Land Emissions and Removals Navigator (LEARN) tool helps communities implement this guidance and integrate estimates into their greenhouse gas inventories.
LEARN is a free online tool that combines methods outlined in the U.S. Community Protocol with the data necessary to perform the calculations. In just a few clicks, users can derive locally-tailored estimates of the annual greenhouse gas impacts associated with changes to forests and tree cover in their community over time. After users specify an area and years to analyze, LEARN performs automated, spatially explicit analyses of data from the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey, including land cover change, type and age structure of a community’s forest lands, timing and location of forest disturbances (fire, harvest, and insect outbreaks), as well as loss and gain of tree canopy cover in urban and other non-forested lands.
Nationally, the LEARN tool performs analysis based on the NLCD Tree Canopy data. While this dataset provides national coverage, it does not accurately capture the true extent and change of trees in many highly urbanized communities due to its relatively coarse (30 meter) spatial resolution. In early 2022, the LEARN project team collaborated with the Chesapeake Conservancy to update LEARN, which now includes high resolution (1 meter) tree canopy change maps for six eastern states and the District of Columbia, derived from the Chesapeake Bay program 1 meter land cover/land use data. The resulting 900-fold increase in resolution enables counties and cities along the eastern seaboard to analyze tree canopy change down to the scale of individual land parcels. This update not only demonstrates the benefits of significantly enhanced analysis capabilities, but it reinforces calls to extend this dataset from regional to national coverage.
What counties provide the most “bang for the buck” when planning Reforestation?
How should my state structure and target incentive programs to support reforestation on the most promising private lands?
Reforestation of previously forested lands has the potential to capture up to 333 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in the U.S. – a quarter of U.S. annual emissions from cars and light-duty trucks. The Reforestation Hub – a joint project of The Nature Conservancy and American Forests – can help land managers, policy makers, and businesses identify which counties have the greatest opportunity for reforestation, how that land is currently used, and what benefits reforestation can offer at that location.
The data identify “areas of opportunity” for reforestation within each county, tallying how much carbon could be captured by reforestation. These areas of opportunity represent lower cost and more feasible options for restoring forest cover – including lands already in natural land use, marginal agricultural lands, post-burn landscapes and areas where trees can provide additional benefits, like flood protection and urban heat relief. Native grasslands, highways, urban cores, wetlands and productive croplands are excluded, except those within floodplains and next to streams and migratory pathways for animals. In addition to mapping these opportunities, the Reforestation Hub provides links to additional information about how to best plant trees.
The Reforestation Hub is an invaluable resource for policy makers to assess the magnitude and location of reforestation opportunities across the United States. As new federal funding for reforestation becomes available, this tool can be used by federal agencies, states, non-profit organizations and private landowners to inform the on-the-ground implementation of these programs.
In which cities in my state are disparities in tree coverage most extreme?
What neighborhoods in my city would benefit most from urban tree planting programs?
A map of tree cover in any city in the United States is too often a map of race and income. This is unacceptable. Trees are critical infrastructure that every person in every neighborhood deserves. Trees can help address damaging environmental inequities like air pollution.
The Tree Equity Score tool, developed by American Forests, calculates scores based on how much tree canopy and surface temperature align with income, employment, race, age and health factors in the United States. Scores are available for 150,000 neighborhoods and 486 urbanized areas (places with at least 50,000 residents). More than 70 percent of people in the U.S. live in one of these places.
Each score indicates whether there are enough trees in specific neighborhoods or municipalities for everyone to experience the health, economic and climate benefits that trees provide. The Tree Equity Score utilizes a science-based approach to determine the tree canopy cover needed in a neighborhood to ensure the people living in urban areas benefit from everything trees provide.
City government employees, community activists, urban foresters and others can use the score to make the case for planting trees in the neighborhoods that need them the most, and allocating the resources needed to do so.
Additional Resources
This Rhode Island Tree Equity Funding, Finance & Policy Guide demonstrates how decision-makers can use the Tree Equity Score tool to develop a comprehensive strategy for tree planting, maintenance and preservation in urban areas.·
Where are existing forest carbon stocks and areas with high annual carbon sequestration rates?
What and where are the threats to these carbon-rich landscapes from development, insects and disease, and wildfire risk?
Where can climate conservation also provide multiple co-benefits by protecting drinking water supplies, rare ecosystems, and important habitat cores?
As climate change impacts intensify around the world, nature-based carbon sequestration and storage are essential tools to addressing the climate crisis. In fact, research has shown that cost-effective natural climate solutions in the U.S. have the potential to absorb 21% of our current net annual greenhouse gas emissions. The question remains, however, where to focus conservation in order to maximize climate benefits. The Conservation Carbon Map, produced by Trust for Public Land with funding from the Royal Bank of Canada Tech for Nature program, can help answer that question and more.
This tool helps identify existing forest carbon stocks and areas with high annual carbon sequestration rates, as well as threats to these landscapes from development, insects, disease, and wildfire. The Conservation Carbon Map also illustrates where climate conservation projects can provide co-benefits, like habitat protection and water quality protection. Data is summarized at the state, county, and watershed scale as well as for approximately 3 million parcels across the U.S that are larger than 100 acres.
Users of the tool can create their own custom analysis by drawing a polygon around an area of interest, providing the flexibility to analyze carbon sequestration potential, threats, and co-benefits data for a couple parcels, a neighborhood or an entire mountain range. Carbon data is presented as a color gradient to allow users to quickly identify areas that have the highest amount of carbon (or least amount of carbon).
Where is there the greatest need for new parks within a city?
Where can parks be placed to ensure equitable access to outdoor recreation, address urban heat islands and improve public health?
How does my city’s park system compare against others?
Parks are essential for public health, climate resilience, and strong connected communities. And yet, 100 million people in the U.S.—including 28 million kids—don’t have a park within a 10-minute walk of home. In addition to providing equitable access to outdoor recreation, parks improve public health, climate resilience and help make communities stronger. Urban trees planted in parks can also play a key role in addressing climate change by sequestering carbon and mitigating the effects of flooding.
ParkServe is a database of local parks across the United States. As a comprehensive mapping platform, it identifies areas within a 10-minute walk of a park, highlights priority areas for new parks, and allows users to overlay additional demographic, environmental, and health data, and the presence of urban heat islands and public schools.
The ParkScore index is the national gold standard comparison of park systems across the 100 largest cities in the United States. The index measures park systems according to five categories: access, investment, amenities, acreage, and—new for 2021—equity. In-depth benchmarking data, such as maintenance spending, key park amenities, and park acreage, collected directly from parks agencies and partners, provides valuable information for how well cities are meeting the need for parks, recreation, and interaction with nature.
Municipal leaders can use these tools to guide park improvement efforts, identify the areas where new parks are needed most, and advocate for increased funding and resources to improve their city’s park system.
Additional Resources
The Trust for Public Land’s special report, The Power of Parks to Address Climate Change, highlights the powerful role that parks can play in mitigating climate change and helping communities adapt to its impacts, while also providing benefits to disadvantaged communities.
This report highlights the role parks can play as a climate solution by sequestering carbon and making cities more resilient to the effects of climate change.
This report highlights how parks can support an equitable economic recovery in the wake of COVID-19.
How can businesses sustainably source commodities, and detect/reduce deforestation in their global supply chains?
Governments and non-profits can use Global Forest Watch identify unsustainable activities taking place that threaten forest ecosystems, and quickly respond to these threats.
Global Forest Watch, developed by the World Resources Institute’s Land & Carbon Lab, is an online platform with the best available data about forests. With the click of a button, anyone can now access near real-time information about where and how forests are changing around the world.
The GFW partnership is comprised of over 100 organizations who contribute data, technology, expertise and action to ensure that transparency drives greater accountability for how the world’s remaining forest landscapes are managed and used. Leveraging satellite data, advanced computer algorithms and cloud computing power, GFW offers an openly accessible suite of tools designed to enable experts and non-experts alike to access information about forest change and mobilize action. Over four million people around the world have used GFW to generate better outcomes for forests and people. Users include:
Local law enforcement officers, park managers, community rangers and non-profit organizations who use GFW’s Forest Watcher mobile app and near-real-time data to identify and respond to threats in time to make a difference.
Global companies buying, selling and financing agricultural commodities like palm oil, soy and beef who use GFW Pro as a management solution to better detect and reduce deforestation in their supply chains.
The Global Forest Review, which leverages GFW’s data and expertise to track progress toward global forest goals and provide accessible insights related to the state of the world’s forests.
National governments that utilize GFW’s monitoring technology to deploy independent Forest Atlases for managing their forest resources.
Non-profit organizations and individuals who receive GFW’s Small Grants Fund and Tech Fellowship, which allows them to use GFW in their advocacy, research and field work.
Thousands of people around the world use GFW every day to monitor and manage forests, stop illegal deforestation and fires, call out unsustainable activities, defend their land and resources, sustainably source commodities and conduct research at the forefront of conservation.
In environmentally sensitive areas, what lands are already protected by conservation easements, and what lands should be targeted for further protection?
What are land trusts in my area doing to help conserve land?
The National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) is the first national database of conservation easement information. This public-private partnership brings together national conservation groups, local and regional land trusts, and local, state and federal agencies around a common objective. The current NCED team, Ducks Unlimited, Inc. and The Trust for Public Land, collaborates with a diverse range of organizations including the USGS Protected Areas Database, GreenInfo, and The Nature Conservancy to compile and standardize information about conservation easements throughout the U.S. in one place. The database currently contains information on more than 130,000 easements covering 24.7 million acres – roughly 60% of all easements in the U.S.
The National Conservation Easement Database can help land trusts and local governments inform conservation planning efforts. In addition to mapping tools, the database includes a search tool, interactive data tables, profiles of easement holders and the ability to download data. This can help landowners, land trusts and governments collaborate more effectively to protect wildlife corridors and other environmentally sensitive lands.
The Land Trust Alliance’s Find a Land Trust platform is a powerful complement to the NCED. This tool makes it easy for anyone across the country to locate a land trust near them. Land trusts listed within the tool offer a variety of ways people can get involved and support conservation in their community.
As land protection efforts like the America the Beautiful initiative get underway, the National Conservation Easement Database can also play a key role in tracking the important contribution that privately owned lands can play in meeting the ambitious goal to protect 30% of U.S. lands and waters by the year 2030.
Additional Resources
This article highlights the role that conservation easements on privately owned land can play in helping the U.S. reach its goal to protect 30% of the country’s lands and waters by the year 2030.
Where should my municipality, agency or land trust focus our conservation efforts for maximum climate and biodiversity benefit?
How can I identify what forests in my area have the greatest potential to capture carbon dioxide and fight climate change?
The Nature Conservancy’s Resilient Lands Mapping Tool allows agencies, land trusts, communities, and others to identify resilient lands across the United States where plant and animal species have the best chance to move away from growing climate threats and find new places to call home.
The tool was developed using data gathered by more than 150 scientists over 10 years that identifies a network of landscapes across the United States with unique topographies, geologies, and other characteristics that can help withstand climate impacts.
The mapping tool can bring together government agencies, land trusts, businesses, private landowners, Indigenous communities, local leaders, and others to develop conservation plans that will help nature thrive on a national scale and continue to provide clean drinking water, economic opportunities and other important services people rely upon for survival.
The tool also allows land managers and other decision-makers to calculate the potential of forests across the continental US to capture and store climate-changing carbon emissions for decades to come, even on lands as small as one-quarter of an acre.
Local, state, and federal decision-makers across the country are using the tool to help them prioritize conservation action, develop effective conservation plans, improve greenhouse gas accounting, and calculate how forest conservation compares to other, sometimes more costly, means of removing and reducing carbon emissions. In regions with increased disturbances, such as fire, the information may be used to inform forest management strategies that reduce the risk of carbon losses.
For example, in North Carolina, the mapping tool was used by the Sandhills Conservation Partnership – a collaboration between the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the North Carolina Forest Service, Fort Bragg, The Nature Conservancy and others – to expand their area of work to include the Uwharrie Mountains. Many longleaf-associated species such as the red-cockaded woodpecker have disappeared from the Uwharries due to a lack of fire management, but the roadmap identified the area as being highly resilient due to its varying soils and topography. The Partnership decided to expand their conservation work to include the Uwharries to ensure it could provide safe homes to the Sandhills’ wide diversity of species as they migrate away from climate impacts.
The Nature Conservancy is also sharing the mapping tool with solar companies to help them determine the best places to site development without harming these important lands.
Additional Resources
This article explains how decision makers can use the carbon layer recently added to the Resilient Lands Tool to target specific areas for conservation that have both value for biodiversity and for carbon storage.
This article illustrates how the Resilient Lands Mapping tool was used to identify a network of resilient and connected lands that can serve as “natural highways and neighborhoods” for plant and animal species to resist the growing threats posed by climate change.
This story map highlights climate-resilient sites across the continental US that collectively represent the extraordinary natural diversity of the country.
Where are there gaps between climate pressures and current management practices on national forests and grasslands?
Where are climate adaptation actions needed to maintain high-value forest ecosystems and watersheds?
The Forest Service Climate Risk Viewer, currently in beta format, is a digital mapping tool that will support climate-informed risk and resource planning for National Forest System lands across the U.S. The tool draws from 30 datasets to demonstrate the overlap of multiple values with climate exposure and vulnerability, and current management direction of National Forest System lands. Resource managers can use this information to assess the need for climate adaptation to maintain valued resources and to identify gaps between current practices and needed adaptation practices. American Forests is convening a diverse set of partners who will work together to improve the user interface and further develop the technical and analytical capabilities of the current beta version.
The tool includes a wide range of data to help forest managers and others assess climate vulnerability:
Climatic Dissimilarity for North America: The estimated magnitude of change between baseline and future climate conditions
National Forest Climate Change Maps: Information on change in snow residence time, frost-free days, and summer dry days
Climate by Forest: Projections of future climate conditions at the national forest scale for 20 climate variables
Terrestrial Condition Assessment: Evaluates the effects of uncharacteristic stressors and disturbance agents to identify restoration opportunities on National Forest Service lands
Multidecadal Repeat-Dryness Exposure Index: Illustrates how increasing atmospheric aridity increases vegetation’s flammability and the susceptibility of trees to mortality by bark beetles
Drought Summary Tool: Summarizes moisture difference maps developed by Forest Service scientists
Human Modification: Helps identify lands that are relatively free from human modification, which require less management interventions to maintain ecological integrity
Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Across the Nation Dashboard: Summarizes climate change vulnerability assessments completed to support national forest/Forest Service regions
What are the potential costs and benefits of adopting regenerative agricultural management practices?
What is the latest science around the impact agricultural practices have on the environment?
What studies have been undertaken in my state or region?
AgEvidence is a database of nearly 300 peer-reviewed research papers from 1980 through present day, with more than 22,000 data points. The tool shows how agricultural management can impact both the environment and the production of food. It provides easy access to this research without having to comb through scientific papers. For users looking for quick answers to important questions, AgEvidence offers curated insights that use the data to answer a multitude of questions about the relationship between conservation agriculture practices and impacts to the environment. For instance, “Which practices best improve water quality?” or “What are the impacts of common cover crop use?” Visualization analytics enable users to easily navigate and interpret the data. Users seeking to go beyond the curated insights can create their own, in-depth custom views of the data.
AgEvidence enables anyone—with or without a science background—to assess the impact of conservation agriculture in the US Corn Belt. This can help decision-makers prioritize which practices to promote through their efforts. Users who want to dig through the data can freely download the data from the AgEvidence database for more detailed analysis.
The AgEvidence website also includes short articles that provide easy to understand summaries of key topics relating to agriculture and climate, including “Which agricultural practices reduce greenhouse gases” and “What is the impact of common cover crop use?” The articles highlight the benefits of various agricultural practice, challenges and uncertainties, and areas where more research is needed to answer key questions.
The AgEvidence database was compiled as part of the Managing Soil Carbon working group of the Science for Nature and People Partnership, which is a partnership of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Wildlife Conservation Society, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Lesley W. Atwood, Ph.D., the postdoctoral scholar with the working group, developed the database.
Additional Resources
This video provides guidance on how to use AgEvidence.
This blog article provides a high-level summary of what information the AgEvidence tool does and how it was developed.
This podcast featuring Dr. Stephen Wood provides further insight on how to access and explore the data in the AgEvidence tool.
Where in my state have soil health practices been most widely adopted? Which areas are lagging?
Where would implementation of conservation agriculture practices provide the most carbon benefit at the lowest cost?
What percentage of land in my state must adopt conservation agriculture practices to meet our climate goals?
The Carbon Reduction Potential Evaluation Tool™, or CaRPE Tool, is a web-based interactive tool developed by the American Farmland Trust and the U.S. Department of Agriculture that allows users to quickly visualize and quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions resulting from the implementation of a suite of cropland and grazing land conservation management practices.
The tool provides a mechanism to quickly compare practices, their estimated costs, and where the greatest impact can be achieved across a state or region. The tool’s data and maps help policymakers, soil and water conservation district planners, land managers, conservation agencies and NGOs optimize climate benefits from agricultural management.
With this tool, you can map current acres and percent of cover crops and conservation tillage at county scale, estimate (and map) GHG reduction potential from current adoption levels, run scenarios for future GHG benefits from additional acres implementing practices, estimate implementation costs, and generate maps and tabular data summarized for each scenario and scaled to county, state, regional, or national levels.
Additional Resources
This article on AFT’s website describes how users can use the CaRPE tool to visualize and quantify the emissions reductions resulting from the implementation of climate-smart agricultural practices.
This Illinois case study shows how the CaRPE tool is helping Illinois farmers and decisionmakers identify opportunities for sequestering carbon on agricultural land, while highlighting the benefits of these strategies.
Where are farms in a state facing the most pressure from development? What lands should local governments, land trusts and other organizations target for protection?
Which policy mechanisms present the biggest unrealized opportunity in my state? What are examples of programs in other states that can be applied to my state?
How can state and local governments work together to keep farmland intact?
From 2001-2016, 11 million acres of agricultural land were paved over, fragmented, or converted to uses that jeopardize agriculture, curtailing sustainable food production, economic opportunities, and the environmental benefits afforded by well-managed farmland and ranchland. Adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices on farmland represent an important opportunity to remove and store carbon, and the conversion of these lands to development represents a lost opportunity to address climate change.
Compounding these impacts, 4.4 million acres of Nationally Significant land were converted to developed land uses – an area nearly the size of New Jersey. The Nationally Significant farmland designation developed by the American Farmland Trust identifies the most productive, versatile, and resilient land for sustainable food and crop production.
The spatial mapping tool developed by American Farmland Trust highlights the scale of conversion of agricultural land to developed land uses, and where conversion is most prevalent. The Agricultural Land Protection Scorecard assesses state-level action to address farmland loss, measures their performance, and highlights policy actions in each state that have been effective in addressing the problem. Policy tools assessed on the scorecard include agricultural easement programs, land-use planning policies, property tax relief for agricultural land, agricultural district programs, state leasing programs and Farm Link programs that link land seekers with landowners who want their land to stay in agriculture.
What coastal restoration projects are active in my state? What organizations were involved? How much did the project cost?
Which restoration projects can serve as a model for future efforts in my state or region?
Coastal restoration is an important conservation strategy that benefits our climate, our environment and our economy. In addition to creating 15 jobs for every million dollars spent, restored coastal lands are more resilient to flooding, create opportunities for outdoor recreation and sequester large amounts of carbon. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Restoration Atlas is “an interactive way to explore NOAA habitat restoration projects around the country—from wetlands and salt marsh projects to oyster and coral reef projects.” The map filters and query tool enable users to search among roughly 3,200 projects by habitat type, location, congressional district, and more. The website includes individual project web pages with detailed information on each project, custom data tables and downloadable project information.
By mapping and detailing coastal restoration projects, the NOAA Restoration Atlas serves as a clearinghouse of information that can help governments, non-profit organizations and tribal entities improve planning for future coastal restoration efforts, using the example of successful completed restoration efforts.
Additional Resources
This NOAA report outlines the socio-economic benefits of coastal restoration.
Identifying opportunities for tidal marsh restoration and conservation, providing a blueprint for state and local governments, non-profits, and other entities to target their efforts.
Establishing a baseline for measuring the impact of future tidal marsh conservation and restoration efforts, allowing governments to build more effective tidal marsh protection and restoration into their climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.
In June 2023, researchers at The University of Cambridge and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) published the Tidal Wetlands Mapper, the first globally consistent 10m resolution map of Earth’s tidal marshes. These often underappreciated yet highly productive coastal ecosystems are critical contributors to human wellbeing, climate, and biodiversity. This map allows for a better understanding of the extent of tidal marsh habitat, helping to identify opportunities for conservation and restoration.
Tidal marshes – which are predominantly salt marshes, but include some freshwater marshes – are supercharged ‘blue carbon’ ecosystems found across cool, temperate and some tropical regions that play a similar ecological role to that of mangroves. The marshes store carbon in their soils for millennia, making them crucial contributors to climate change mitigation efforts, while also supporting countless plant species and providing feeding and nesting grounds for billions of birds, fish, mollusks, and crustaceans.
The global map highlights the Atlantic shores of North America and Northern Europe as global tidal marsh epicenters – home to 45% of the world’s tidal marshes. Their location on rich, low-lying land adjacent to waterways (often some of the world’s most populated areas) means tidal marshes have long been cleared and drained for agriculture, industry, transport networks and urban expansion. So much tidal marsh area has been degraded or drained that these ecosystems are now rare – covering only 53,000 km2 of land across the globe – less than the size of West Virginia.
The researchers behind the new tidal marsh map hope that local conservation initiatives, like the Lightning Point Shoreline Restoration Project recently profiled by U.S. Nature4Climate, can provide powerful blueprints for action, while the global map can encourage a vast scaling up of conservation, enabling communities the world over to benefit from tidal marsh conservation and restoration.
The Nature Conservancy and partners at the University of Cambridge and the University of Delft are already working on several associated initiatives, including a global model of carbon storage in tidal marshes that will be applied to the existing map, as well as a global model of the importance of tidal marshes in protecting people and infrastructure from storm surges and flooding.
