About this Research Topic

Background

This Research Topic provides the opportunity to present the research activities of the CLand Institute. The CLAND Institute of Convergence project funded by the French national research agency for ten years gathers the efforts of more than 100 researchers in the Paris Saclay area from key institutions in the field of climate change impacts, sustainable agriculture, ecosystem services, environmental impacts and land use socio-economics. The scientific challenge tackled by CLAND is to integrate research in modeling climate change, food and fiber production, biodiversity dynamics, ecosystem functioning and land-use socio-economics, together with data syntheses to understand key feedbacks and assess risks and sustainable options for integrated management of land ecosystems. CLAND spans the full range of disciplines necessary to make breakthroughs in the integrated assessment of the interplay between climate change and land use and management. This is in line with the objective of concentrating the recent advances of the institute and at the same time to present the state of knowledge on Land-management solutions.

The production of food and fibers at global and regional scale will be severely impacted by climate change, which will require transformational adaptation strategies. In the mean time, reducing greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture and forestry is central to the international objective of keeping climate warming below 2°C.

This call for this collection is particularly focused on the challenges of the CLand Institute. The focus are the explorations of alternative pathways for climate mitigation and adaptation for low warming targets. Three challenges are particularly targeted into three groups: i) the Land-based mitigation and nature-based solutions; ii) the adaptation of agricultural and forestry production in the face of climate change; and iii) the understanding and managing of the transition towards an integrated land management.

We aim to present the recent advances in:

• the cross-cutting of mitigation, adaptation and management solutions for climate change;

• assessment of the impacts of shocks and extreme events on a cascade of processes affecting land management and societies;

• the reducing uncertainties on land-based mitigation options, such as enhancing carbon sequestration in biomass and in soils, and reducing CH4 and N2O emissions from the agricultural sector;

• the understanding of the cause-effect chain between climate change and food and wood production, and options to forecast and reduce the risk of climate change;

• and the analysis of the policy options for managing the transition towards new land use systems that articulate climate change adaptation and mitigation while maintaining ecosystem biodiversity.

We welcome all contributions related to the climate mitigation and adaptation for low warming targets with a particular focus on alternative pathways. We seek interdisciplinary studies investigating the effect and feedbacks between biosphere-land use and atmosphere. In situ, laboratory, and modeling studies or a combination are encouraged, and study areas can include local, regional or global scale issues. Modeling studies including investigations into future projections and highly encouraged. We are also looking forward to papers that provide a better understanding of the processes involved in biogeochemical cycles in agriculture and forestry, or balances and projections of food production and food security, including the resulting economic impacts. Article types accepted for submission include original research, review articles, and perspectives.

Keywords: Land management, land use socio-economics, sustainable development

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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