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Significant progress in permafrost carbon science made over the past decades include the identification of vast permafrost carbon stocks, the development of new pan‐Arctic permafrost maps, an increase in terrestrial measurement sites for CO2 and methane fluxes, and important factors affecting carbon cycling, including vegetation changes, periods of soil freezing and thawing, wildfire, and other disturbance events. Process‐based modeling studies now include key elements of permafrost carbon cycling and advances in statistical modeling and inverse modeling enhance understanding of permafrost region C budgets. By combining existing data syntheses and model outputs, the permafrost region is likely a wetland methane source and small terrestrial ecosystem CO2 sink with lower net CO2 uptake toward higher latitudes, excluding wildfire emissions. For 2002–2014, the strongest CO2 sink was located in western Canada (median: −52 g C m−2 y−1) and smallest sinks in Alaska, Canadian tundra, and Siberian tundra (medians: −5 to −9 g C m−2 y−1). Eurasian regions had the largest median wetland methane fluxes (16–18 g CH4 m−2 y−1). Quantifying the regional scale carbon balance remains challenging because of high spatial and temporal variability and relatively low density of observations. More accurate permafrost region carbon fluxes require: (a) the development of better maps characterizing wetlands and dynamics of vegetation and disturbances, including abrupt permafrost thaw; (b) the establishment of new year‐round CO2 and methane flux sites in underrepresented areas; and (c) improved models that better represent important permafrost carbon cycle dynamics, including non‐growing season emissions and disturbance effects.

Significant progress in permafrost carbon science made over the past decades include the identification of vast permafrost carbon stocks, the development of new pan-Arctic permafrost maps, an increase in terrestrial measurement sites for CO2 and methane fluxes, and important factors affecting carbon cycling, including vegetation changes, periods of soil freezing and thawing, wildfire, and other disturbance events. Process-based modeling studies now include key elements of permafrost carbon cycling and advances in statistical modeling and inverse modeling enhance understanding of permafrost region C budgets. By combining existing data syntheses and model outputs, the permafrost region is likely a wetland methane source and small terrestrial ecosystem CO2 sink with lower net CO2 uptake toward higher latitudes, excluding wildfire emissions. For 2002–2014, the strongest CO2 sink was located in western Canada (median: −52 g C m−2 y−1) and smallest sinks in Alaska, Canadian tundra, and Siberian tundra (medians: −5 to −9 g C m−2 y−1). Eurasian regions had the largest median wetland methane fluxes (16–18 g CH4 m−2 y−1). Quantifying the regional scale carbon balance remains challenging because of high spatial and temporal variability and relatively low density of observations. More accurate permafrost region carbon fluxes require: (a) the development of better maps characterizing wetlands and dynamics of vegetation and disturbances, including abrupt permafrost thaw; (b) the establishment of new year-round CO2 and methane flux sites in underrepresented areas; and (c) improved models that better represent important permafrost carbon cycle dynamics, including non-growing season emissions and disturbance effects.

Cellulosic biofuels from non-food feedstocks, while appealing, continue to encounter uncertainty about their induced land use change (ILUC) effects, net greenhouse gas (GHG) saving potential and their economic costs. We analyse the implications of multiple uncertainties along the biofuel supply chain from feedstock yields, land availability for production to conversion to fuel in the refinery on these outcomes. We find that compared to corn ethanol, cellulosic biofuels have a substantially smaller and less uncertain ILUC-related GHG intensity and lead to larger GHG savings at lower welfare costs of abatement, indicating the potential to make robust and substantial contributions to cost-effective climate change mitigation.

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Kropp, H., Loranty, M. M., Natali, S. M., Kholodov, A. L., Rocha, A., V., Myers-Smith, I., Abbot, B. W., Abermann, J., Blanc-Betes, E., Blok, D., Blume-Werry, G., Boike, J., Breen, A. L., Cahoon, S. M. P., Christiansen, C. T., Douglas, T. A., Epstein, H. E., Frost, G., V., Goeckede, M., Hoye, T. T., Mamet, S. D., O'Donnell, J. A., Olefeldt, D., Phoenix, G. K., Salmon, V. G., Sannel, A. B. K., Smith, S. L., Sonnentag, O., Vaughn, L. S., Williams, M., Elberling, B., Gough, L., Hjort, J., Lafleur, P. M., Euskirchen, E. S., Heijmans, M. M. P. D., Humphreys, E. R., Iwata, H., Jones, B. M., Jorgenson, M. T., Gruenberg, I., Kim, Y., Laundre, J., Mauritz, M., Michelsen, A., Schaepman-Strub, G., Tape, K. D., Ueyama, M., Lee, B., Langley, K., & Lund, M. Shallow soils are warmer under trees and tall shrubs across arctic and boreal ecosystems. Environmental Research Letters, 16(1), (2021): 015001. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abc994., Soils are warming as air temperatures rise across the Arctic and Boreal region concurrent with the expansion of tall-statured shrubs and trees in the tundra. Changes in vegetation structure and function are expected to alter soil thermal regimes, thereby modifying climate feedbacks related to permafrost thaw and carbon cycling. However, current understanding of vegetation impacts on soil temperature is limited to local or regional scales and lacks the generality necessary to predict soil warming and permafrost stability on a pan-Arctic scale. Here we synthesize shallow soil and air temperature observations with broad spatial and temporal coverage collected across 106 sites representing nine different vegetation types in the permafrost region. We showed ecosystems with tall-statured shrubs and trees (>40 cm) have warmer shallow soils than those with short-statured tundra vegetation when normalized to a constant air temperature. In tree and tall shrub vegetation types, cooler temperatures in the warm season do not lead to cooler mean annual soil temperature indicating that ground thermal regimes in the cold-season rather than the warm-season are most critical for predicting soil warming in ecosystems underlain by permafrost. Our results suggest that the expansion of tall shrubs and trees into tundra regions can amplify shallow soil warming, and could increase the potential for increased seasonal thaw depth and increase soil carbon cycling rates and lead to increased carbon dioxide loss and further permafrost thaw., We thank G Peter Kershaw, LeeAnn Fishback, Cathy Wilson, and Coleen Iversen for assistance in collection of data. We thank the Permafrost Carbon Network for support and organization of the data synthesis. We thank Vladimir Romanovsky for his feedback and contribution of publicly available data. This project was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 1417745 to M L, Grant No. 1417700 to S M N, Grant No. 1417908 to A K, Grant No. 1556772 to A R, Grant No. 1637459 to L G, Grant No. 1636476 and Grant No. 1503912 to E S E, Grant No. 1806213 to B M J, Grant No. 1833056 to K D T), UK Natural Environment Research Council (Grant No. NE/M016323/1 to I H M S, Grant No. NE/K00025X/1 to G K P, Grant No. NE/K000292/1 to M W), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research (to P L, I H M S, Grant No. RGPIN-2016-04688 to D O), Council of Canada, Canadian Graduate Scholarship to (I H M -S), Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring Programme: ClimateBasis (to J A and K A), The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) project is supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science (to A L B), Engineer Research and Development Center Army Direct (6.1) Research Program and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (projects RC-2110 and 18-1170 to T A D), United States Geological Survey (to E E S), Arctic Challenge for Sustainability (ArCS; Grant No. JPMXD1300000000) and ArCS II (Grant No. JPMXD1420318865) (to M U and H I), the Danish National Research Foundation (Grant No. CENPERM DNRF100 to B E), the Academy of Finland (Grant No. 315519), the National Research Foundation of Korea (Grant Nos. NRF-2016M1A5A1901769; KOPRI-PN20081 to K Y and B Y L), Research Network for Geosciences in Berlin and Potsdam (to I G), the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. 140631 to G S S), the URPP Global Change and Biodiversity, University of Zurich (to G S S), the University of Alberta Northern Research Awards (to D O), and th

Grasslands can significantly contribute to climate mitigation. However, recent trends indicate that human activities have switched their net cooling effect to a warming effect due to management intensification and land conversion. This indicates an urgent need for strategies directed to mitigate climate warming while enhancing productivity and efficiency in the use of land and natural (nutrients, water) resources. Here, we examine the potential of four innovative strategies to slow climate change including: 1) Adaptive multi-paddock grazing that consists of mimicking how ancestral herds roamed the Earth; 2) Agrivoltaics that consists of simultaneously producing food and energy from solar panels on the same land area; 3) Agroforestry with a reverse phenology tree species, Faidherbia (Acacia) albida, that has the unique trait of being photosynthetically active when intercropped herbaceous plants are dormant; and, 4) Enhanced Weathering, a negative emission technology that removes atmospheric CO2 from the atmosphere. Further, we speculate about potential unknown consequences of these different management strategies and identify gaps in knowledge. We find that all these strategies could promote at least some of the following benefits of grasslands: CO2 sequestration, non-CO2 GHG mitigation, productivity, resilience to climate change, and an efficient use of natural resources. However, there are obstacles to be overcome. Mechanistic assessment of the ecological, environmental, and socio-economic consequences of adopting these strategies at large scale are urgently needed to fully assess the potential of grasslands to provide food, energy and environmental security.

Using land already enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the eastern region of the U.S. for producing energy crops for bioenergy while reducing land rental payments offers the potential for lowering the program costs, increasing returns to CRP landowners, and displacing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuels. We develop an integrated modeling approach to analyze the combination of biomass prices and CRP land rental payment reductions that can incentivize energy crop production on CRP land and its potential to increase soil carbon stocks and displace fossil fuel emissions. We find that conversion of 3.4 million ha in the CRP can be economically viable at a minimum biomass price of $75 Mg–1 with full CRP land rental payment or at $100 Mg–1 with 75% of this land rental payment; this conversion can result in savings of 0.52 and 1.25 billion Mg CO2-eq in life-cycle emissions through the displacement of energy-equivalent fossil fuels and coal-based electricity, respectively, and an additional 0.11 billion Mg CO2-eq soil carbon sequestration relative to the status quo, with CRP left unharvested over the 2016–2030 period. The soil carbon debt due to the transition from unharvested CRP land to energy crops is short-lived and more than offset by the reduction in fossil fuel emissions. The net discounted benefits from producing energy crops on CRP land through a reduced need for government payments to maintain existing enrollment, higher returns to CRP landowners, and the value of the reduction in GHG emissions could be as high as $16–$30 billion by using them for cellulosic biofuels to displace gasoline and $35–$68 billion by displacing coal-based electricity over the 2016–2030 period if biomass prices are $75–$125 Mg–1 and land rental payments are reduced by 25%.

Soils are warming as air temperatures rise across the Arctic and Boreal region concurrent with the expansion of tall-statured shrubs and trees in the tundra. Changes in vegetation structure and function are expected to alter soil thermal regimes, thereby modifying climate feedbacks related to permafrost thaw and carbon cycling. However, current understanding of vegetation impacts on soil temperature is limited to local or regional scales and lacks the generality necessary to predict soil warming and permafrost stability on a pan-Arctic scale. Here we synthesize shallow soil and air temperature observations with broad spatial and temporal coverage collected across 106 sites representing nine different vegetation types in the permafrost region. We showed ecosystems with tall-statured shrubs and trees (> 40 cm) have warmer shallow soils than those with short-statured tundra vegetation when normalized to a constant air temperature. In tree and tall shrub vegetation types, cooler temperatures in the warm season do not lead to cooler mean annual soil temperature indicating that ground thermal regimes in the cold-season rather than the warm-season are most critical for predicting soil warming in ecosystems underlain by permafrost. Our results suggest that the expansion of tall shrubs and trees into tundra regions can amplify shallow soil warming, and could increase the potential for increased seasonal thaw depth and increase soil carbon cycling rates and lead to increased carbon dioxide loss and further permafrost thaw.